Military aircraft crashes in Afghanistan

A military aircraft crashed on Thursday in a mountainous area of northern Afghanistan, a local official said."A military aircraft has crashed in the Basgah area on the peak of the Salang mountains, between northern and southern Salang," Mohammad Asif Qazizada, district governor of Khinjan district, told AFP.

"It is not known at this stage to whom the aircraft belongs, exactly what type of aircraft it is, if there were any passengers and who they were."A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said they had "no aircraft missing" while an Afghan interior ministry spokesman in Kabul said he could not confirm the report.

Qazizada said police had been sent to the area, but had yet to report back.Locals said the downed aircraft was a jet fighter, he added.Mohammad Akbar Barikzai, governor of the northern province of Baghlan, said that he had "heard information of an air crash"."We cannot confirm it at this stage but we are investigating the reports," he added.

General Murad Ali Murad, the commander of the army's northern corps, said: "We are investigating reports of a military aircraft crash in Salang. We cannot confim anything at this stage. We are investigating."

Posted in: Afghanistan,Fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban