KABUL — Search craft Thursday spotted the wreckage of a commercial airliner that disappeared Monday while flying over Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains with 44 people aboard, including six foreigners, officials said.
Also Thursday, the Pentagon announced that one colonel and two lieutenant colonels were among five American soldiers killed Tuesday by a suicide car bomber in Kabul. Deaths of so many senior officers in a single attack are rare.
Photos supplied by NATO forces show the plane was broken into four pieces strewn across a steep mountainside — suggesting survival is unlikely. It wasn’t clear whether any of the helicopters flying over the crash site were able to land on the rugged terrain.
The Antonov-24, operated by Pamir Airways, was flying from the northern city of Kunduz to Kabul when air traffic controllers lost track of it. Three British citizens and an American were among the six foreigners who were a board, officials said.
Poor weather and the rugged terrain hampered the search. NATO, which aided the search, said the crash site was about 13,500 feet high.
Pamir’s chief executive officer said the plane was inspected about three months ago in Bulgaria.
The Pentagon released the names of five U.S. soldiers who died in the Tuesday car bombing, the deadliest attack against NATO forces in Kabul since September. A Canadian colonel also died in the blast.
A statement on the Pentagon website identified the dead Americans as Col. John M. McHugh, 46, of New Jersey; Lt. Col. Paul R. Bartz, 43, of Waterloo, Wis.; Lt. Col. Thomas P. Belkofer, 44, of Perrysburg, Ohio; Staff Sgt. Richard J. Tieman, 28, of Waynesboro, Pa.; and Spec. Joshua A. Tomlinson, 24, of Dubberly, La.
