Afghan minister: No sign of life at site of Pamir airline crash

Afghan minister: No sign of life at airline crash

KABUL, Afghanistan — Search teams Friday reached the remote mountain site where a commercial airliner crashed this week and found no sign of survivors among the 44 people aboard, Afghanistan’s aviation minister said.

The Antonov-24 operated by Pamir Airways disappeared Monday on a flight from Kunduz to Kabul. The wreckage was spotted Thursday by a search plane on a 13,500-foot (4,100-meter) mountain in Shakar Darah district north of Kabul.

Aviation Minister Mohammadullah Batash told The Associated Press that searchers reached the site Friday but found no sign of survivors.

Three Britons and one American were among eight foreign passengers on the plane along with nationals from Pakistan and Australia, according to chief aviation investigator Ghulam Farooq. He did not have precise numbers for Australian and Pakistani passengers.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency said three Tajikistan citizens working for the airline were also aboard, possibly among the crew.

Photos supplied by NATO forces show the plane broken into four pieces and strewn across a steep mountainside about 24 miles (38 kilometers) north of Kabul. Bad weather and the rugged mountain terrain hampered the search.

Kabul-based Pamir Airways, named after the Pamir mountain range of Central Asia, began operations in 1995. It has daily flights to major Afghan cities and flies to Dubai and Saudi Arabia for the hajj pilgrimage.

Pamir’s chief executive officer, Amanullah Hamid, said the plane was last inspected about three months ago in Bulgaria. The An-24 is a medium-range twin-turboprop civil aircraft built in the former Soviet Union from 1950 to 1978. A modernized version is still made in China.

It is widely used by airlines in the developing world due to its rugged design, ease of maintenance and low operating costs.

Also Friday, a roadside bomb exploded in Afghanistan’s main southern city of Kandahar, killing one civilian and wounding three children, an official said.

The early morning blast appeared to target an Afghan intelligence service vehicle that drove down a main road in Kandahar city, said Abdul Ali, an intelligence official who was at the scene. Instead, an elderly man took the brunt of the blast — his body could be seen lying in the street.

Three children were injured in the attack and taken to hospitals, he said.

The intelligence vehicle was damaged but no one inside was wounded, Ali said.

Elsewhere, seven insurgents including one would-be suicide car bomber launched an attack on an Afghan border police station in Paktika province on the frontier with Pakistan.

Police opened fire as the bomber tried to enter the grounds of the station, police chief Dawlat Khan said. Officers killed the bomber before he could detonate the explosives-laden vehicle.

Three other militants outside the vehicle opened fire but were killed in a 30-minute gunbattle. Three others escaped.

One policeman and two civilians were killed and one policeman was wounded, Khan said.

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Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.