KABUL, 8 February 2005 — NATO-led troops said it might take several weeks to recover all the bodies from the wreckage of an Afghan jet carrying 104 people, as search teams found the first human remains at the crash site yesterday.
Bad weather forced international peacekeepers to halt operations, hours after a helicopter dropped them near the Kam Air Boeing 737-200 for the first time since the plane hit a mountain east of Kabul on Thursday.
Afghan troops traveling overland also made it to the desolate snowfield on Monday and were planning to remain at the site, but they were not allowed to touch the bodies or the wreckage, officials said.
“There is no estimation of how long it could take... but it could take several weeks”, said Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Poulain, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force based in Afghanistan.
The bodies of three victims, whose nationalities were not known, were found at the site, an Afghan Army general told an AFP reporter on board a helicopter flying over the site at Chaperi Ghar.
“They have found human remains,” confirmed ISAF’s Poulain.
The tail of the plane with the Kam Air logo could be seen on the top of the mountain while a piece of debris that looked like the engine was visible further down on the other side, an AFP reporter said.
However there appeared to be no sign of major parts such as the fuselage or the wings.
The jet went missing on Thursday during a flight from the western city of Herat to Kabul. Among those on board were 24 foreigners — six Americans, one Iranian, three Italians, nine Turks, a Canadian and four Russian crew members.
Its wreckage was spotted Saturday 30 km east of the capital at an altitude of 3,000 meters after an intensive search but rescuers could not reach the site until early yesterday.
Six mountain rescue specialists from Slovenia who were the first at the site were later airlifted out as aerial operations were suspended yet again due to the poor weather, Poulain added.
“The weather changes very fast so we cannot say that they will not resume this afternoon,” he said. Rescue efforts have consistently been hampered by the bad weather, which is also thought to have been a contributing factor in the disaster.
Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi said Afghan National Army soldiers reached the site at around 1:00 p.m. after nearly a day’s trek up the mountain.
“They do not have authorization to touch the bodies or the wreckage,” he added.
A team of doctors was due to reach the site soon as well as an investigation team, while a joint investigation team with members from the countries whose citizens were on board could also go, he said.
