NATO troops reached the wreckage of an Afghan airliner Monday, four days after it crashed into a snowy mountain peak with 104 people on board, and began the gruesome task of sifting through the remains, an alliance spokesman said. Officials hold out little hope for finding any of the 96 passengers and eight crew _ including more than 20 foreigners _ alive. Clear skies allowed helicopters to drop a small team of medics, mountaineers and explosives experts near the site, 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of Kabul, on Monday morning, an alliance spokesman said. There was no immediate word on what they saw. "The weather is much better today, which allowed them to get to the top," Maj. Joseph Bowman said. "They're looking for survivors and trying to make the site secure" for more forces to join the operation, he said. The Boeing 737-200, flown by Kam Air, Afghanistan's first post-Taliban private airline, vanished from radar screens Thursday afternoon as it approached Kabul airport in a snowstorm from the western city of Herat. NATO helicopters spotted parts of the wreckage some 3,300 meters (11,000 feet) up Chaperi Mountain on Saturday, but freezing fog, low cloud and up to 2.5 meters (eight feet) of snow had prevented alliance and Afghan forces from reaching the site by air or on the ground. If the fatalities are confirmed, it will be Afghanistan's worst air disaster.
