6 Americans dead in plane crash in Afghanistan
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-01 15:27

Search teams have recovered the bodies of six Americans who died when their plane crashed high in Afghanistan's snow-covered mountains, U.S. military officials said Wednesday.

"We regret to report that all six individuals on board the aircraft — the three U.S. civilian crew members and three U.S. soldiers — were killed in the crash," said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Mark McCann.

"An investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the crash. However, at this time, we have no indication this crash was caused by hostile fire."

He said the victims' identities would be released later by the U.S. Defense Department and Florida-based Presidential Airways, which had contracted the CASA 112 transport plane to the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan.

The bodies were found amid the debris of the plane in the heart of the Hindu Kush mountains, southeast of Bamiyan.

"They found pieces of the engine and the wheels scattered on top of Baba Mountain," which rises to 16,600 feet and was covered in fresh snow, said Ghulam Mohammed, a senior police official in Bamiyan.

The plane went down Saturday while en route to Shinband, in Herat province, according to Maj. Gen. Eric Olson.

"The indications we have is that it got into a valley and tried to gain altitude quickly," Olson said. "The pilot apparently recognized that we was not going to be able to gain altitude quickly enough and tried to make a very dramatic turn, didn't make it and crashed into a very narrow valley. The aircraft broke into pieces on the ground."

The fixed-wing CASA 112 is designed to fly in and out of the kind of short, rough air strips used to supply American forces deployed in remote areas of the country to search for Taliban and al-Qaida militants.

Accidents have accounted for most of the more than 100 deaths of U.S. service members since Operation Enduring Freedom began in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Many have involved helicopters, and the most recent fatality was that of an American airman fatally wounded on Oct. 20 when his search-and-rescue chopper crashed near the Iranian border due to technical problems.

The last combat deaths were those of two U.S. soldiers killed by a roadside bomb last Wednesday in Uruzgan province.

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