Nato troops find Afghan plane crash bodies

Nato soldiers found human remains, but no survivors, in the wreckage of an Afghan airliner, days after it struck a snowbound peak with 104 people on board.

Medical teams are expected to begin collecting bodies from the freezing mountain today, a job that could take weeks to complete, said defence ministry spokesman Gen Mohammed Zaher Azimi.

Yesterday, clear skies allowed a Spanish Cougar helicopter to drop five Slovenian mountain troops on to the mountain top 20 miles east of Kabul, where they toiled through the deep snow to inspect several pieces of fuselage.

“They did find human remains,” Nato spokeswoman Maj Karen Tissot Van Patot said. It was impossible to say how many bodies the remains belonged to, she said. The troops were lifted out again as visibility deteriorated.

Officials expect all those aboard – most of them Afghans, but also including more than 20 foreigners – perished in what would be Afghanistan’s worst aviation disaster.

The Boeing 737-200, flown by Kam Air, Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban private airline, vanished last Thursday as it approached Kabul airport in a snowstorm from the western city of Heart. There were 96 passengers and eight crew aboard.

Nato helicopters spotted parts of the wreckage some 11,000 feet up Chaperi Mountain on Saturday, but freezing fog, low clouds and up to 8ft of snow had prevented teams from reaching the site.

By last night, 100 Afghan soldiers had clambered up the mountain to within 150 yards of the crash site, said Azimi.

Nine Turks, six Americans and three Italians were believed to have been on the plane, although a final list has yet to be released. Airline officials say the crew was made of up of six Russians and two Afghans, although Moscow said only four Russian citizens were missing.

Afghanistan’s most recent commercial crash was on March 19, 1998, when an Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 slammed into a peak south of Kabul, killing all 45 passengers and crew. The US military has suffered a string of deadly air accidents in Afghanistan, most involving helicopters.