Two killed, four survive Afghanistan plane crash, Taliban says

Two Taliban officials in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan said on Sunday that two passengers were killed in a plane crash involving a charter aircraft in the province, but they said four others had survived.

Khan Mohammad, head of the provincial governor's office, said the four surviving passengers were now with Taliban administration representatives. Zabihullah Amiri, Badakhshan's provincial spokesman, confirmed the death toll and that four had survived.

Earlier, Afghan officials had said they were sending a team to the remote, mountainous area where police had received reports of a crash.

Russian aviation authorities said on Sunday a Russian-registered plane with six people thought to be on board had disappeared from radar screens over Afghanistan the previous night.

Police in northern Afghanistan received reports of a plane crash in Badakhshan province, a provincial police spokesperson said on Sunday.

India's civil aviation authority said that the plane crash was not a scheduled commercial flight or an Indian chartered aircraft and that "more details are awaited."

Zabihullah Amiri, a spokesperson for Badakhshan's provincial government, told Reuters a team had been sent to the location of the crash, but it was a remote area more than 200 km (124 miles) from the provincial capital Fayzabad and would take the team 12 hours to reach.

The Afghan provincial police spokesperson said in a statement the crash had taken place overnight in a remote, mountainous region of Badakhshan in Afghanistan's far north.

Two of the passengers were Russian nationals

Two Russian citizens were passengers on a charter flight bound for Moscow that disappeared over Afghanistan, Russia's state-run TASS news agency said on Sunday, citing a source "in the operational services."

A manifest list for the plane, which named everyone on board and which was published by the SHOT news outlet, appeared to show that the crew were Russian nationals too.

Four people survived a plane crash involving a Russian-registered plane in Afghanistan and the fate of two other people on board is being clarified, Russia's aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Sunday, citing Russian diplomats.