Azernews.Az

BAKU – Remains of the crew members of the Azerbaijani cargo plane that recently crashed in Afghanistan have been found, a representative of Azerbaijan’s embassy in Pakistan and Afghanistan has said.

Chingiz Garibli told the Baku-based APA news agency that the bodies of the crash victims were found in a large-scale operation carried out by Afghan law enforcers.

"After our numerous appeals and notes issued to the Afghan side, the country’s interior ministry conducted this operation," Garibli said.

According to him, the corpses are currently kept at a hospital in Kabul. "After the required paperwork goes through, the dead bodies will be sent to Azerbaijan in the shortest time possible," the diplomat added.

All nine crew members on board - five citizens of Azerbaijan and four Uzbek nationals - were killed after the IL-76 plane carrying cargo to the international coalition forces in Afghanistan crashed in the Parwan province, north of Kabul, on July 6. The plane was carrying 18 tons of cargo from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Bagram. The city is located around 45 km north of the Afghan capital and is home to the largest US air base in the country.

The Taliban reportedly claimed responsibility for the incident.

Members of the commission investigating the crash have not been able to reach the crash site due to the operations being waged there against the Taliban.

An official of the Afghan transport ministry earlier claimed it was meaningless to visit the region where the plane crashed, saying everything has turned into ashes during the explosion and fire on board, except the "black box". The official added that US servicemen who submitted the "black box" to the transport ministry said they had not seen any human remains at the crash site.

However, it remains unclear whether or not the "black box" that was found belonged to the Azerbaijani plane, as scripts on it shown on the photos made at the site have not yet been deciphered.

The IL-76 plane of the privately owned Silk Way Airlines, with loading capacity of 40 tons, was manufactured in Russia in 2005.