A TURKISH transport helicopter with at least 11 civilians was forced to make an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area in eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all the people on board hostage, including eight Turks and a Russian, officials say.
The civilian aircraft landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in a village named Dahra Mangal in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul, District Governor Hamidullah Hamid told The Associated Press.
He said the helicopter came down in a gorge in the densely forested region, known for narrow gorges and rugged mountains, about 20km from the Pakistani border.
The Taliban fighters then captured everyone aboard the helicopter and took them away, Hamid said on Monday.
In a phone interview, Arsala Jamal, Logar's provincial governor, identified the hostages as eight Turks, one Afghan translator and two foreign pilots of unknown nationality.
In Ankara, a spokesman at Turkey's Foreign Ministry confirmed that eight Turks were aboard the helicopter but had no information on their condition or what had happened to them after the emergency landing.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with ministry regulations.
Stepan Anikeyev, the Russian embassy's press attach in Kabul, said in a phone interview that a Russian man was being held hostage.
He said the Russians knows he was one of the two pilots but that they don't have details about his identity yet and that they're in "constant touch" with local officials in Afghanistan.
Security forces were dispatched to the area where the helicopter came down and engaged in firefights with the Taliban but quickly retreated because they had no support, said Logar Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai.
"We brought the police back because there was no help from the (NATO) coalition or the Afghan army. The police were unable to secure the area, which is very rural, and we were worried," Rahimzai said.
He added that information they had from the region was that the hostages were taken by the Taliban to Hisarak district of neighbouring Nangarhar province.
Hamid said that repeated calls for the Afghan army or NATO help went unanswered, and that the police were unable to secure the area, which is located 15km from the district police compound in the town of Azra.
NATO confirmed that the Turkish helicopter went down on Sunday, but the International Security Assistance Force did not have any other details.
It did say there were "no ISAF" or "US personnel on board the Turkish helicopter", denying an earlier Taliban claim that they had detained Americans on the aircraft.
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