A transport plane used by the Taleban militia in Afghanistan has crashed inside neighbouring Pakistan with at least 50 people on board -- all of them believed to be Taleban fighters.

Pakistani and Afghan officials say there is little hope of finding survivors as the aircraft came down in bad weather in a mountainous region near the border between the two countries.

An official with the Pakistani frontier force said his men at a border post had seen flames rising from the crash site.

The plane was on a domestic flight from the Taleban headquarters at Kandahar, in south-western Afghanistan, to Herat near the Iranian border when it was forced to turn back because of the weather.

Herat is a staging post for battles in the north-east of Afghanistan.

After failing to land at Kandahar, the Russian-made plane strayed into Pakistani airspace, and the pilot radioed an emergency message to Quetta airport before contact was lost.

It is said to have come down near the Khojak Pass. So far, there has been no official confirmation of the number of casualties.

The Taleban, who control about 80% of Afghanistan, are fighting for supremacy in remaining areas of the country against an alliance of groups drawn largely from Afghanistan's ethnic minorities.
 

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