Plane crashes in central Afghan province

Acting CEO of Ariana Airlines Mirzakwal has denied reports of Afghan officials that one of its planes has crashed

KABUL: 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 rumours were "not true".

"All the flights of Ariana Afghan Airlines have been completed normally," a statement on the carrier's verified Facebook page read.

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.

The last civilian flight to crash was in May 2010, when an ageing Pamir Airways plane went down in bad weather during a scheduled flight to Kabul from the northern province of Kunduz.

It was carrying six crew and 38 passengers when it crashed into a mountainside 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Kabul.

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.

Earlier, three senior Afghan government officials said one of the state-owned airline's planes had crashed in Afghanistan's central Ghazni province

A senior official in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office in Kabul said that a plane had crashed near Ghazni province and authorities were still seeking details.

Reuters was not immediately able to contact Noori again.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, said the group was checking on reports of the plane crash.