A Russian chartered flight that left India for Moscow via Uzbekistan was feared to have crashed after it went missing from radar screens over Afghanistan on Saturday night, Reuters reported. There were six persons on board.
Afghan authorities subsequently reported a crash in a mountainous area in the Badakhshan province, about 200 kilometres from Fayzabad, the provincial headquarters. The office of the province’s police chief also confirmed reports of the crash, according to the Associated Press.
India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation clarified that the plane was “neither an Indian Scheduled Aircraft nor a Non Scheduled (NSOP)/Charter aircraft”. It was slated to travel from Gaya in Bihar to Tashkent and then to Moscow.
Zabihullah Amiri, a spokesperson for Badakhshan’s provincial government, told Reuters that a team had been dispatched for the crash site but it would them 12 hours to arrive at the area.
International flights have largely avoided Afghanistan since the Taliban took control of the nation in 2021, reported AP. The Wakhan Corridor in Badakhshan province is sometimes used for a few minutes by carriers.
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