An American military aircraft was reported to have crashed only 6.2 miles from a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan. The United States military said there were no indications that the crash was caused by enemy fire. A journalist in the area named Tariq Ghazniwal corresponded with The Associated Press on twitter, saying he saw two bodies and the front of the aircraft was badly burned.
Ghazniwal also said local Taliban were protecting the crash site and additional militants were searching for two people believed to have survived the crash. The Associated Press could not independently verify his account, which also included that the crash was “not loud” and occurred shortly after 1 p.m. local time.
The Associated Press reports that “images on social media purportedly of the crashed plane showed an aircraft bearing U.S. Air Force markings similar to other E-11A surveillance aircraft photographed by aviation enthusiasts.” The aircraft, dubbed “wi-fi in the sky” can be unmanned or crewed, and is “used by the military to extend the range of radio signals and can be used to convert the output of one device to another, such as connecting a radio to a telephone.”
The Associated Press reported an odd scenario that “local Afghan officials had said earlier on Monday that a passenger plane from Afghanistan’s Ariana Airlines had crashed in the Taliban-held area of the eastern Ghazni province.” However, “Ariana Airlines told The Associated Press that none of its planes had crashed in Afghanistan.”
A spokesman for the provincial governor said the Afghan state-owned airline crashed 80 miles southwest of Kabul. The acting director for Ariana Airlines rebuked the report and released a statement on its website saying all aircraft were operational and safe. As for the U.S. military plane, spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Col. Sonny Leggett, “said that the military plane, a Bombardier E-11A, crashed in the Ghazni province and an investigation of its causes was ongoing.”
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