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Kabul, Jan 27: A passenger plane crashed on Monday in a Taliban-held area of Afghanistan's Ghazni province, local officials said.

Arif Noori, spokesman for the provincial governor, said the plane went down around 1:10 p.m. local time in Deh Yak district, which is held by the Taliban. Two provincial council members also confirmed the crash.

The number of people on board and their fate was not immediately known, nor was the cause of the crash.

Ariana Airlines, Afghanistan's national carrier, dismissed the claim that one of their planes had crashed in a statement on their website, saying all their aircraft were operational and safe.

The mountainous Ghazni province sits in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains and is bitterly cold in winter.

The last major commercial air crash in Afghanistan occurred in 2005 when a Kam Air flight from western Herat to the capital Kabul crashed into the mountains as it tried to land in snowy weather.

The war however has seen a number of deadly crashes of military aircraft. One of the most spectacular occurred in 2013 when an American Boeing 747 cargo jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Bagram air base north of Kabul en route to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. All seven crew member were killed.

Afghanistan's aviation industry suffered desperately during the rule of the Taliban when its only airline Ariana was subject to punishing sanctions and allowed to fly only to Saudi Arabia for Hajj flights.

Since the overthrow of the religious regime smaller private airlines have emerged but the industry is still a nascent one.

Dubai, Jan 8: A Ukrainian airliner crashed soon after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport on Wednesday, killing all 176 people aboard, Iran's state television and Ukraine's leaders said.

The Boeing 737 belonging to Ukraine International Airlines crashed near the airport and burst into flames. Ukraine's embassy in Iran, citing preliminary information, said the plane had suffered engine failure and the crash was not caused by "terrorism".

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said there were no survivors.

"My sincere condolences to the relatives and friends of all passengers and crew," Zelenskiy said in a statement, adding that Ukraine was seeking to establish the circumstances of the crash and the death toll.

Iranian TV said the crash was due to technical problems but did not elaborate. State broadcaster IRIB said on its website that one of the plane's two black boxes - the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder - had been found.

Iranian media quoted an Iranian aviation official as saying the pilot of the airliner did not declare an emergency.

There was no official word from Ukraine International Airlines. It was the Kiev-based airline's first fatal crash.

"The fire is so heavy that we cannot (do) any rescue... we have 22 ambulances, four bus ambulances and a helicopter at the site," Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran's emergency services, told Iranian state television.

Ukraine's prime minister and Iranian state TV said 167 passengers and 9 crew were on board. Iranian TV said 32 of those on board were foreigners.

Television footage showed debris and smouldering engine parts strewn across a field, and rescue workers with face masks retrieving bodies of the victims.

According to air tracking service FlightRadar24, the plane that crashed was Flight PS 752 and was flying to Kiev. The plane was three years old and was a Boeing 737-800NG, it said.

The model's twin engines are made by CFM International, a U.S.-French venture co-owned by General Electric and France's Safran.

Modern aircraft are designed and certified to cope with an engine failure shortly after take-off and to fly for extended periods on one engine. However, an uncontained engine failure releasing shrapnel can cause damage to other aircraft systems.

A spokesman for Boeing said the company was aware of media reports of a plane crash in Iran and was gathering more information. The plane manufacturer grounded its 737 MAX fleet in March after two crashes that killed 346 people.

The 737-800 is one of the world's most-flown models with a good safety record and which does not have the software feature implicated in crashes of the 737 MAX.

Under international rules overseen by the United Nations, Iran is responsible for leading the crash investigation.

Ukraine would be involved and the United States would usually be accredited as the country where the Boeing jet was designed and built. France, where the engine maker CFM has half its activities, may also be involved.

There was no immediate word on whether the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board would be involved in the probe amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The NTSB usually invites Boeing to give technical advice in such investigations.

New Delhi, Apr 27: A private hospital here claimed that a coronavirus patient, who was administered plasma therapy for the first time in the facility, was discharged on Sunday after being completely cured.

The 49-year-old man had tested positive for COVID-19 on April 4 and was admitted to Max Hospital, Saket, it said in a statement.

As his condition deteriorated, he was put on ventilator support on April 8, the hospital added.

When the patient showed no signs of improvement, his family requested for administration of plasma therapy on compassionate grounds, it said, adding that the family arranged a donor for extracting plasma.

The patient was administered fresh plasma as a treatment modality as a side-line to standard treatment protocols on the night of April 14, the statement said.

Subsequently, the patient showed improvement and by the fourth day, was weaned off ventilator support and continued on supplementary oxygen. He was shifted to a room with round-the-clock monitoring on Monday after testing negative twice within 24 hours, it said.

He has now fully recovered and was discharged, the hospital said, adding that he will stay at home for another two weeks.

Group medical director of Max Healthcare and senior director of the Institute of Internal Medicine Dr Sandeep Budhiraja said, "We can say that plasma therapy could have worked as a catalyst in speeding up his recovery. We cannot attribute 100 per cent recovery to plasma therapy only, as there are multiple factors which carved his path to recovery."