BBC reported a passenger plane belonging to Ariana Airlines crashed and caught fire in eastern Afghan Ghazni province, citing officials; Daily Mail UK said, “Boeing passenger plane carrying 83 people crashes in Afghanistan”; “Case Closed. USAF E-11A BACN has crashed in Ghazni, Afghanistan”, a tweet by @AuroraIntel said.
DESPARDES (Updated) — A plane crashed in eastern Afghanistan’s Ghazni province Monday, officials said, but it was not immediately clear how many people were on board, or if it was a passenger or military jet.
“At around 1:10 pm (0840 GMT) a plane crashed in Deh Yak district of Ghazni province. The plane is on fire and the villagers are trying to put it out. We still don’t know if it is a military or commercial plane,” Aref Noori, Ghazni’s governor’s spokesman, told AFP.
A police spokesperson in the province also confirmed the crash but was also unable to identify the craft.
Large swathes of the rural areas in Ghazni province are controlled or under the influence of Taliban militants making access to the area difficult for officials.
Social media was rife with suggestions that the plane was from the state-owned Ariana Afghan Airlines — however, the company said the rumors were “not true”.
“All the flights of Ariana Afghan Airlines have been completed normally,” a statement on the carrier’s verified Facebook page read.
Ariana Afghan Airlines’ acting CEO Mirwais Mirzakwal on Monday denied reports by Afghan officials that one of its planes had crashed.
“There has been an airline crash but it does not belong to Ariana because the two flights managed by Ariana today from Herat to Kabul and Herat to Delhi are safe,” Mirzakwal told Reuters.
BBC reported a passenger plane belonging to Ariana Airlines crashed and caught fire in eastern Afghan Ghazni province, citing officials.
Daily Mail UK said, “Boeing passenger plane carrying 83 people crashes in Afghanistan”.
“Case Closed. USAF E-11A BACN has crashed in Ghazni, Afghanistan”, a tweet by @AuroraIntel said.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, told AFP the group was checking on reports of the plane crash.
Crashes involving military flights, particularly helicopters, are common in Afghanistan where inclement weather and creaky aircraft are often pressed to their limits in the war-torn country where insurgents have been known to target helicopters.
With input from AFP news agency
