US-chartered cargo plane crashes in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A cargo plane chartered by the U.S. military crashed into a mountaintop in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

No Americans were aboard the plane, said U.S. Army Maj. James Lowe, a spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.

The plane was carrying four pallets of heavy equipment, said Lowe, who described the flight as a standard shipment into Bagram Air Field in eastern Afghanistan. Lowe declined to name the company that owns the plane or the aircraft's point of departure until relatives of the crew were notified.

The plane hit a mountain peak late Tuesday night, said Sayed Aleem Agha, the top official in Sayagred district of Parwan province, north of Kabul.

Agha said he fears that crew members were killed, but that rescue workers had not yet arrived at the crash site.

"I saw a huge fire as a result of the crash," he said. "My guess is that it was a big cargo plane because the fire lasted for a long time."

Abdul Shakoor, a police official in neighboring Shinwari district, also said that a cargo plane had crashed into the mountain.

British Maj. Tim James, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said the plane crashed about 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) up the mountain. There was no insurgent activity in the area at the time of the crash, he said.