The plane that crashed in eastern Afghanistan on Monday in a Taliban-controlled area is owned by U.S. forces, insurgents say, the Afghan Defense Ministry denies it is a Afghan device.
"A special aircraft of the American occupiers has crashed ... in Ghazni province," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mudjahid said in a statement, adding that all members of the crew had perished.
No comments from the Americans
An Afghan defense ministry spokesman, Rohullah Ahmadzai, said the aircraft was not owned by Afghan forces. "He does not belong to the air force, the intelligence service, the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of the Interior," he said.
US forces in Kabul did not provide comments. Videos and photos transmitted via the Twitter account of a person close to the Taliban, and whose AFP could not verify the authenticity, show the remains of a medium-sized aircraft crashed in a snow field. The tail of the plane, which is intact, bears the logo of the American aviation.
A surveillance mission?
According to the Taliban, the aircraft "flew on a surveillance mission". The type of the device corresponds to those used in the country by the US Air Force for electronic surveillance.
The plane crash was reported by local authorities to be around 1:00 p.m. The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority (ACAA) later said in a statement that "no commercial aircraft crashes has been registered ".
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