Wreckage of missing Afghan airliner found

[cal04]

The wreckage of an Afghan airliner that went missing with 104 people on board has been found east of Kabul, a western security source told AFP. The Kam Air Boeing 737 travelling from Herat to Kabul vanished from radar screens on Thursday afternoon after requesting permission to divert because of heavy snow storms, officials said.

"The plane was found 35 kilometres east of Kabul. We don't know if there are any survivors," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity. However another source close to the search operation gave a different distance, saying the crash site was 57 kilometres from the capital.

Afghan Transport Minister Enayatullah Qasimi refused to comment when contacted by AFP, while officials from the privately-run airline could not be reached. NATO-led peacekeepers and Afghan forces launched a search for the plane in the country's mountainous terrain after hopes that it had managed to divert to Pakistan were dashed.

Nine Turks and three Americans are thought to be among a number of foreign passengers on the 737 while six of the eight crew members were Russian, officials said.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1296468.htm

[karlrschneider]

1. Afghan airliner wreckage found

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=721&e=1&u=/nm/20050204/wl_nm/afghan_crash_dc

Sorry if this is a dupe, didn't see it.

[DemoTex]

2. Low fuel, bad weather, mountains ... not good. Been there; done that.

"It did not have so much fuel to enable it to fly far," he said.

[karlrschneider]

3. Me too but not in that part of the world...

...

[ewagner]

4. No rule

for "destination plus 45 minutes" in Afghanistan?

[AP]

5. Info about passengers:

Nine Turks and an Italian were confirmed as being among the 96 passengers while three Americans were thought to have been on the plane. Six Russian and two Afghan crew members were also aboard, officials said.

...

Three American women working for the US-based Management Science for Health company were probably on the plane, operations manager Bill Shiffbauer told AFP. Other officials said they were aged between 20 and 30.

"We are fairly certain that three of our staff are in the plane, three American women. We're hoping for a miracle, but it appears that they were in (the plane)," he said.

...

Italian officials said naval Commander Bruno Vianini, who arrived two weeks ago to help reconstruction in Herat, was on the flight, while there were fears for two other Italians who could have taken the same plane.


http://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050204162549.bh5ouakk.xml

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. It's disputed that it has been found

from that story:

The security source said the Kam Air Boeing 737 was found to the northeast of the capital, but there was no word on casualties.

"We don't know if there were any survivors," he said.

A U.S. military spokesman said he could not confirm if the plane had been found, but spokesmen for a NATO-led peacekeeping force and the Afghan Defense Ministry said it had not.

"The crash site has not been definitely detected," said an Afghan Presidential Palace official on condition of anonymity. "A suspected site was seen, but the aircraft could not land there to confirm it because of poor weather."

[karlrschneider]

7. Yeah, not sure what's going on...I just got back and played back the

local noon news from the TIVO which I missed and they said they had "abandoned the search for the night..."
:wtf:

[DemoTex]

8. NBC Nightly News said the same thing.

Search suspended for night and/or WX.

[karlrschneider]

9. This is VERY strange...maybe the wx is zero-zero, but you'd think they

could either find something or definitely say -nothing- was located. Anybody reporting squawk 7700?.....I can't figure this one out.....
:eyes:

[daleo]

10. Maybe someone has to find the plane before they can "find the plane".

There could have been someone or something important on the flight that has to be covered up before the official crash location is publicized. This is Afghanistan after all.