Information has been received that a private Russian plane carrying 6 people has crashed in a remote rural area of Afghanistan.
The aircraft had departed from Gaya city in India via Tashkent in Uzbekistan for Zhukovsky International Airport in Moscow as a charter ambulance aircraft.
Regional spokesman Zabiullah Amiri said the accident occurred in a mountainous area near Zebak district of Badakhshan province. A rescue team was dispatched to the area.
The Badakhshan police chief’s office also confirmed news of the accident in a statement. Russian civil aviation authorities in Moscow said the Dassault Falcon 10 had gone missing with four crew members and two passengers on board.
He said that the plane had lost radar contact. Russian officials said the plane belonged to Athletic Group LLC.
However, in a separate statement, the Taliban described the plane as belonging to a Moroccan company. Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, operation of international flights there has been avoided.
The plane had refueled in Gaya
At the same time, the Indian government said that a small plane that crashed in Afghanistan did not belong to any Indian aviation company and it had refueled at Gaya airport while flying from an airport in Thailand to Moscow.
Amid reports of an Indian plane crashing in Afghanistan on Saturday night, the Civil Aviation Ministry clarified that the plane was registered in Morocco.
“According to available information, the crashed aircraft is a Moroccan-registered DF-10 (Dassault Falcon) small aircraft,” the ministry said in a statement.
This is not an aircraft of any Indian airline. The aircraft was an air ambulance and was flying from Thailand to Moscow and had refueled at Gaya airport.