Two people who were initially unaccounted for in a Russian plane crash over the weekend in the mountainous northeast of Afghanistan are now reported to have died in the air disaster, according to Afghan officials.
The Falcon 10 business jet was believed to be carrying six people 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 fate of two people is being looked into," Rosaviatsia said Sunday, citing the Russian embassy in Afghanistan.
But an Afghan official at 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. It had six crew members. 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.
