NATO official denies emergency landing in Afghanistan

From the BNO Newsroom.

URUMQI, China (BNO NEWS) -- A spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF alliance has denied reports that a plane made an emergency landing in Afghan's Kandahar as was reported by Chinese state media on Sunday evening.

According to the Xinhua-news agency, a plane flew into Chinese airspace and was threatened with a bomb. The report added that the plane was denied a landing in China's Urumqi, where emergency services had responded to the airport to prepare for an emergency. The agency then reported that the plane safely landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Initially, the news agency said the plane was hijacked but an hour later, it retracted the report saying only: "The sources previously told Xinhua the plane was hijacked."

A spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF alliance in Kabul, however, told BNO News that they had no reports of any incident involving a plane, adding significant doubts to the credibility of the media reports in China. "We are aware of the reports. [..] We have no evidence that this is true," he said. "We would know immediately," he said earlier.

The Reuters news agency, while citing air traffic sources, said the aircraft was denied landing permission in China because of paperwork and added there was no threat.

The Chinese news agency did not report the airliner, if it was a passenger plane, or how many people would have been on board.

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