KABUL, Afghanistan - Searchers found no survivors Friday among 44 people on board an Afghan commercial airliner that crashed this week on a remote mountain north of the capital of Kabul, the aviation minister said.
The Antonov-24 operated by Pamir Airways disappeared Monday on a flight from Kunduz to Kabul. The wreckage was spotted Thursday by a search plane on a 13,500-foot mountain in the Shakar Darah district north of Kabul.
Aviation Minister Mohammadullah Batash said ground searchers reached the site Friday but found no survivors.
Three Britons and one American were among eight foreign passengers on the plane along with nationals from Pakistan and Australia, according to chief aviation investigator Ghulam Farooq. He did not have precise numbers for Australian and Pakistani passengers.
Photos supplied by NATO forces show the plane broken into four pieces and strewn across a steep mountainside about 25 miles north of Kabul. Bad weather and the rugged mountain terrain hampered the search.
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The cause of the crash, which occurred in heavy fog, has not been determined. The airline denied allegations of lax safety procedures made by an American photojournalist who said she took a Pamir flight from Kunduz to Kabul on May 4.
Stephanie Sinclair said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that during the flight, the pilot allowed several passengers to enter the cockpit even though there was turbulence and bad weather. They remained there until the plane landed.
"The whole thing was extremely reckless behavior on everyone's part. I did complain to a Pamir flight attendant during the flight and then also to the airport office manager when we landed," Sinclair said.
Khalilullah Fruzi, a co-owner of Pamir, dismissed the allegations as "propaganda by our competitors."
"It is wrong, it is illegal," Fruzi said. "There is no additional space for another person in the cockpit. Our pilot was a Tajik-Russian and we never heard such allegations."
Pamir's chief executive officer, Amanullah Hamid, said the plane was last inspected about three months ago in Bulgaria. The An-24 is a medium-range twin-turboprop civil aircraft built in the former Soviet Union from 1950 to 1978. A modernized version is still made in China.
Elsewhere, a NATO soldier was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said without identifying him by nationality. Later, the British Defense Ministry said the service member was a British Marine killed by a bomb in Helmand province.
US toll in Afghanistan
• Deaths: 990
• Wounded: 5,916
Latest identifications
• Pfc. Billy G. Anderson, 20, of Alexandria, Tenn.; was assigned to the 508th Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
SOURCE: Department of Defense