INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Two people who were initially unaccounted for in a Russian plane crash over the weekend in the mountainous northeast of Afghanistan are now
on a hospital flight from India to Uzbekistan and Russia before communication with it was lost on Saturday evening.Four people survived,
while two were initially reported as unaccounted for by Russia's air transport agency Rosaviatsia."Of the six people on board the aircraft,
tentatively, four are alive
They have various injuries
the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation later said the two other passengers had died in the accident."We did a search for two days and
yesterday evening we found the location of the plane
We rescued the four that were alive
Two people died," Abdul Sattar Gharwal, the director general of the ministry, said.The four survivors were taken to Kabul.The RIA Novosti
news agency said two of the plane's passengers were Russians, one who was seriously ill, and the other her husband who had paid for the
flight.The two-engine plane, built by France's Dassault in 1978, was owned by a company called Athletic Group and a private individual.A
provincial government official in Afghanistan told AFP the aircraft came down in Badakhshan province, which borders China, Tajikistan and
Pakistan.The area of the crash is eight hours by road from the provincial capital Faizabad, said Zabihullah Amiri, head of the provincial
information department.Russian investigators announced that they had launched an investigation into the causes of the crash.
