Afghan plane crash search hindered by snow

Snow clouds closed over Kabul early today, complicating plans for Nato and government forces to resume their search for a passenger jet carrying 104 people, including about 21 foreigners, after it disappeared near the mountain-ringed Afghan capital.

Relatives and officials expressed growing doubts that any of the missing can be found alive after the plane vanished on Thursday in what could turn out to be the war-ravaged country’s deadliest aviation disaster.

The Kam Air Boeing 737-200 took off on Thursday afternoon from the western city of Herat for Kabul, but disappeared from radar screens a few miles east of Kabul during a snowstorm, sparking a massive search operation.

Afghanistan’s Nato peacekeeping forces sent helicopters and ground teams to scour an area southeast of the capital yesterday, where officials said the plane was last located. But they returned to base empty-handed.

This morning, fresh snow was falling from heavy cloud cover in Kabul and it was unclear if aircraft would be able to take off.

“The weather is no good, so I don’t think the air search can resume,” said Defence Ministry spokesman Gen Mohammed Zahir Azimi.

However, Gen Mahbub Amiri, a commander of the Interior Ministry’s quick-reaction force, said he would send a first group of forty police out regardless to search several areas south and south east of the city.

“We are soldiers. It is our job,” he said.

Yesterday, Nato and Afghan officials denied reports, including one from the Turkish government, that the wreckage had been located.

French Lt Col Patrick Poulain, a spokesman at the Nato headquarters in Kabul, said helicopters had failed to pick up any signal from the plane’s on-board rescue beacon.

The airline said the Boeing was carrying 96 passengers and an eight-member crew of six Russians and two Afghans, but the exact number of foreigners was unclear.

Three passengers were believed to be American women working for Management Sciences for Health, a non-profit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In Rome, the Italian Defence Ministry said one of the passengers was Capt Bruno Vianini, who was assigned to a military-sponsored reconstruction project, while the Foreign Ministry said there were also two Italian civilians on the jet.