An Azerbaijani cargo plane with nine crew on board crashed into treacherous mountains outside the Afghan capital overnight where concerns are growing for those on board, officials said on Wednesday. The plane took off from Baku at 9:26 pm Tuesday (1626 GMT) with 18 tons of supplies for the US-led Nato mission in Afghanistan and crashed as it tried to land at Bagram air base to the north of Kabul, officials said.
The Azerbaijani embassy in Pakistan said the nine crew were from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, and that the plane was operated by private Azerbaijani airline Silk Way. There were no reports of bad weather or fighting in the area and it was not yet clear what caused the crash, with Afghan forces so far unable to reach the high-altitude crash site, the transport ministry said.
A spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force confirmed it was a military-contracted flight. The Azerbaijani Civil Aviation Administration said contact with the IL-76 was lost at 1:40 am local time (2110 GMT Tuesday), but that the crew had not reported any emergency.
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