A Russian private jet crashed in Afghanistan as it was traveling to Moscow and it was reported that four of the passengers survived while the condition of two others remained unclear.
The announcement, made by Russia's aviation watchdog on Sunday, cited reports from the Russian embassy in Afghanistan. The survival of the four passengers was reported by two Taliban provincial officials, adding that they were with Taliban administration officials.
The top spokesman of the Taliban administration, Zabiullah Mujahid said that the pilot was included among the four survivors. In a statement, he said that the investigative team of the Islamic Emirate was continuing its efforts to search for and provide assistance to the remaining individuals involved in the crash.
The Russian-registered charter plane was carrying six people before it disappeared from radar screens over Afghanistan the day prior to the report. Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsia reported the latest news on Sunday after Afghan police said that they received reports of a crash, as per CNN.
The plane that crashed was a charter ambulance flight that was traveling from Thailand's Utapao Airport in Pattaya to Moscow. It was flying via India and Uzbekistan on a French-made Dassault Aviation Falcon 10 jet that was manufactured in 1978.
Roughly 25 minutes before the plane disappeared from radar screens, the pilot warned that the aircraft's fuel was running low and that he would try to land at an airport in Tajikistan. The pilot then reported that one engine had stopped and later noted that the second one had also stopped.
India's civil aviation authority said that the Russian private jet was not a scheduled commercial flight or an Indian chartered aircraft. The RIA news agency said that the plane was carrying one bedridden patient in serious condition who was transported from one of the hospitals in Pattaya to Russia.
The area where the Russian jet crashed was a mountainous area in Badakhshan province, located roughly 250 kilometers northeast of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. It is a rural, mountainous area that is home to only several thousand people, according to Yahoo News.
Survivors From the Accident
Russia's Investigative Committee later said that it had opened a criminal case on charges related to potential violations of air safety rules or negligence. Standard procedures require investigations to be opened over crashes.
In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said that the Russian embassy in Afghanistan was working with local officials regarding the incident. A spokesman for the Taliban's Information and Culture Ministry said that while engine problems were believed to be the cause of the crash, he did not elaborate on the matter.
The Taliban-run Afghan aviation ministry noted that the planned route of the plane that crashed did not include passing through the nation's airspace. It cited that "technical issues" could have caused the craft to divert from its original plans, said Reuters.
The incident comes as international carriers have largely avoided Afghanistan since the Taliban's 2021 takeover of the nation's government. Those that do fly over the region only do so for a few minutes and mainly over the sparsely populated Wakhan Corridor in Badakhshan.
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