Kabul -
Five charred bodies were recovered on Wednesday from the wreckage of a cargo plane that slammed into a mountaintop east of Afghanistan's capital Kabul with eight people aboard.
Searchers scoured the blackened site high up the mountainside for three other crew members missing and feared dead, said police General Zulmayi Horya Khail.
The plane went down east of the capital shortly after take-off from Bagram Air Field, the main US military base in Afghanistan, at about 5.30pm SA time on Tuesday. The cause of the crash wasn't immediately known. Weather conditions were clear at the time.
An Associated Press photographer near the scene saw wreckage ablaze on the mountainside on Tuesday night.
Hundreds of Afghan security forces in fatigues carrying M-16 rifles gathered at the bottom of the mountain on Wednesday. Smoke could be seen rising from the scattered wreckage several hundred metres straight up.
“Today our forces are working to secure the site and we are waiting for the further orders from the Afghan defence ministry to move to the next step,” said Afghan National Army commander Colonel Abdul Malik.
Kabul Airport Director Mohammad Yaqub Rassuli said the aircraft was carrying supplies for Nato forces. He said all eight crew members were believed dead.
The plane owned by United Arab Emirates-based TransAfrik was under contract by the US-based company National Air Cargo.
“The company has confirmed that a TransAfrik L-100 aircraft flying from Bagram to Kabul went down shortly before 8pm,” National Air Cargo said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the crew and their families.”
The L-100 Hercules aircraft is the civilian equivalent of a military C-130 plane.
Nato said in a statement the crash occurred about 30 kilometres east of the Kabul International Airport.
In May, a passenger plane operated by Pamir Airways, a private Afghan airline, crashed while travelling from Kunduz in northern Afghanistan to the capital. All 44 passengers on the plane died. - Sapa-AP