NATO Searching for Missing Afghan Jet

Associated Press | February 4, 2005
By STEPHEN GRAHAM

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan and NATO forces launched a ground and air search operation Friday for an Afghan passenger jet carrying 104 people that disappeared from radar screens during a snowstorm near the mountain-ringed capital. Three Americans were thought to have been on board.

The Kam Air Boeing 737-200 took off Thursday afternoon from the western Afghan city of Herat bound for Kabul, but it was unable to land because of bad weather. The airline initially said the plane was diverted to neighboring Pakistan, but officials there said it never entered their airspace.

``The last time that we have been told that the aircraft was seen on radar was about 3.1 miles east of Kabul,'' Afghan Transport Minister Enayatullah Qasemi said at a news conference Friday. ``Since this morning we have begun a search and rescue operation in the area.''

Kam Air president Zamarai Kamgar said there were 96 passengers on board, including seven foreigners. Three were believed to be American health workers. The eight-member crew included six Russians and two Afghans, Kamgar said.

Kabul is surrounded by high mountains, raising the hazards for planes flying in bad weather. Snow clouds had cleared Friday, improving the prospects of finding and reaching any crash site, though the area near the Pakistan border is so remote that officials suspect militants, including Osama bin Laden, have hidden there since the fall of Afghanistan's former Taliban government in 2001.

The private airline's mainly domestic flights are popular with Afghans wealthy enough to avoid long journeys over bumpy roads. Aid and reconstruction workers also use them, and three of the passengers were believed to be Americans working for Management Sciences for Health, a firm based in Cambridge, Mass., said company representative William Schiffbauer.

Schiffbauer, who is based in Kabul, said the three employees were women but declined to give further details.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said officials were trying to establish how many Americans were on the plane.

A Bangladeshi national working for Snowy Mountains Engineering Corp., an Australian consulting firm, was also on board, said company official Shaheen Bokhari.

NATO, which has an 8,000-member peacekeeping force in Kabul, was leading the search using Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, dozens of ground troops and an unmanned drone, spokeswoman Maj. Karen Tissot Van Patot said. Afghan police and troops also joined the rescue mission.

Qasemi said the pilot last contacted the Kabul control tower at about 3 p.m. Thursday to ask for a weather update and was cleared for landing by Bagram Air Base moments before it disappeared from radar screens.

He said officials had checked with local air fields and those in neighboring countries without finding any trace of the plane.

The last major plane crash in Afghanistan was on Nov. 27 last year, when a transport plane under contract to the U.S. military crashed in central Bamiyan province, killing three American soldiers and three American civilian crew.

The most recent commercial crash was on March 19, 1998, when an Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 slammed into a mountain near Kabul, killing all 45 passengers and crew.

Kam Air was the first private airline established in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and made its maiden flight on the Kabul-Herat route in November 2003. The airline operates a fleet of leased Boeing and Antonov aircraft on domestic Afghan routes as well as to Dubai.