Prime Minister, Other Coalition Officials Fighting Afghanistan’s Talibans Die In Crash

A plane carrying leaders of the alliance fighting Afghanistan’s Taliban Islamic army crashed Thursday, killing everyone on board, a spokesman for the opposition said.

The coalition’s new prime minister was among seven top officials aboard the transport plane that crashed at an airfield in Bamyan, 90 miles northwest of Kabul, the capital.

“It was a short runway and the plane skidded off the end. All the people on board were killed on the spot,” the spokesman, Abdullah, told the Associated Press. Like many Afghans, he uses only one name.

Neither of the opposition’s most prominent figures - ousted government military chief Ahmed Shah Massood and warlord Rashid Dostum - were on board. The total number of victims was unclear.

There was no immediate suggestion of sabotage.

The premier, Abdul Rahim Ghafurzai, was appointed this month by leaders of the anti-Taliban coalition that controls the northern third of Afghanistan.

The coalition is a tenuous alliance led by Massood and northern warlords. It has been fighting the Taliban religious army, which captured Kabul last September in its campaign to impose a strict Islamic regime on all of Afghanistan.

Ghafurzai had been chosen only after weeks of debate. The former government’s premier, Gulbbudin Hekmatyar, is exiled in Iran.

Abdullah said it was “too early” to name a replacement for Ghafurzai. “It took a long time for us to settle for him,” he said.