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6 Americans confirmed dead in Afghan crash
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-01 21:21
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.
The plane went down Saturday, but search efforts were complicated by bad
weather and difficult terrain, said military spokesman Maj. Mark McCann.
"We regret to report that all six individuals on board the aircraft ¡ª the
three U.S. civilian crew members and three U.S. soldiers ¡ª were killed in the
crash," McCann said.
He said the victims' identities would be released later by the Defense
Department and Florida-based Presidential Airways, which had contracted the CASA
212 transport plane to the U.S. Air Force.
A plane carrying the bodies of the six victims back to the United States
left Bagram on Tuesday evening, bound for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware,
McCann said.
"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," McCann said.
The bodies were found amid the debris of the plane in 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 5,060 meters (16,600 feet) and was covered in fresh
snow, said Ghulam Mohammed, a senior police official in Bamiyan.
McCann said the plane's flight recorder had been retrieved, but it was
not clear what it showed about the crash.
He said the plane crashed en route to Farah, in western Afghanistan.
However, a senior U.S. general said it was headed for Shindand, 60 miles further
north.
"The indications we have is that it got into a valley and tried to gain
altitude quickly," Maj. Gen. Eric Olson told The Associated Press. "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 fixed-wing CASA 212 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.
McCann said the bodies of the six Americans will be returned to their
families "as soon as possible."
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