U.S. Plane Goes Down In Afghanistan, Prompting Wave Of Questions, Contradictions

A plane crashed Monday in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province, and within hours, a swarm of conflicting reports had coalesced around the wreckage.

According to a U.S. official, the plane was a small American fixed-wing aircraft with two people on board, both of whom died in the crash. The official told NPR that the plane went down because of mechanical problems.

But that's not the only account of the incident.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, told NPR that insurgents with the group shot down the plane and that it had CIA officials on board. Earlier Monday, Mujahid referred to the plane on Twitter as an "enemy intelligence aircraft" and said the bodies of the intelligence officials were still lying near the crash site in the Sado Khelo region of Ghazni.

The militant group frequently exaggerates battlefield actions, and the claims could not be confirmed.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, Ruhallah Ahmadzai, told NPR that the aircraft was not Afghan — neither civilian nor military. Ahmadzai said Afghan special forces have been deployed to the crash site.

Journalists in the area posted purported images of the charred, smoldering wreck, which NPR has not independently verified. The plane shown in several different videos bears markings that appear to be a version of U.S. Air Force insignia.

The Pentagon has not yet released an official statement on the crash.

Confusion around the crash has swirled since virtually the moment it occurred. Initial reports, citing local government officials, said the plane was operated by the state-owned Ariana Afghan Airlines — only to be rebutted quickly by the company's acting chief executive, Mirwais Mirzakwal.

"It does not belong to Ariana because the two flights managed by Ariana today from Herat to Kabul and Herat to Delhi are safe," Mirzakwal told Reuters. And the airline itself, in a Facebook post, also pushed back on suggestions that its plane was involved.

For the past couple of years, Ghazni province has stood at the epicenter of friction between the Afghan military and the Taliban.

The militant organization recaptured control of much of the region after launching a series of attacks that left hundreds dead in 2018. And just last month, a Taliban infiltrator killed roughly two dozen Afghan soldiers at a military base in the province.

U.S. troops also remain a principal target for the Taliban. Earlier this month, an improvised explosive device, or IED, set by the Taliban killed a pair of service members in the southern province of Kandahar.

Producer Khwaga Ghani in Kabul and NPR's Diaa Hadid and Tom Bowman contributed to this report. [Copyright 2020 NPR]