Aircraft departing from Thailand’s Utapao Airport crashed in Afghanistan
Two Russian citizens were among the passengers on a charter flight destined for Moscow that went missing over Afghanistan, as reported by Russia's state-run TASS news agency on Sunday, citing a source "in the operational services."
A manifest list for the plane, published by the SHOT news outlet, indicated that the entire crew were Russian nationals.
Russian aviation authorities announced on Sunday that a Russian-registered plane, believed to have six individuals on board, disappeared from radar screens over Afghanistan the previous night, following reports of a crash from local Afghan police.
According to Russia's RIA news agency, the flight was a medical evacuation mission from Thailand to Moscow.
On Sunday, Russian investigators disclosed the initiation of a criminal investigation to ascertain whether safety regulations were violated.
The crash occurred on Sunday morning in the Badakhshan Province of northeast Afghanistan, as confirmed by Zabihullah Amiri, the head of the local Information and Culture Department, in a statement to the Tolo news agency. A search team has been dispatched to the area, Amiri added.
Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority, identified the aircraft as a Falcon 10 corporate jet registered with a Russian company. The plane was en route from Gaya in India to Moscow’s Zhukovsky Airport, with a layover in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, according to their statement.
The aircraft, initially departing from Thailand’s Utapao Airport, had four crew members and two passengers on board, according to Rosaviatsia's data.
The Russian Consulate in Bangkok stated that the plane was conducting a medical evacuation from the Thai city of Pattaya, transporting a Russian woman accompanied by her husband.
The spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Abdul Wahid Rayan, attributed the crash to an engine problem in a statement on the social media platform no X (formerly Twitter). He also claimed that there were "seven Russians abroad" and alleged the aircraft belonged to a Moroccan firm.
The Falcon 10, an early business jet manufactured by the French company Dassault Aviation between 1971 and 1989, remains popular on the secondary market despite its age.
