KABUL, Feb. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Independent sources confirmed Friday morning that an Afghan private airliner that was scheduled to landin the capital Thursday afternoon is still unaccounted for 18 hours after its takeoff in west Afghanistan.

    Haji Timar, chief of Kabul International Airport, told Xinhua that the Boeing 737 is still missing after an overnight frenzied effort to locate it. "It is now still missing," he said.

    The plane was missing after being turned away from Kabul airport the previous day due to a snow storm, an airline official said.

    Earlier, a representative of Kam Air that owns the distressed airliner said the plane was missing. However, another official who worked with the Kam Air told Xinhua this morning that the plane has landed safely in Peshawar airport and 36 of the passengers on board will be flown to Kabul if weather permits. He promised to provide more details later.

    One of the airliner officials who refused to give his name saidthe plane had landed safely in Islamabad airport, but this can notbe independently confirmed.

    Jehangir Khan, operations director of Pakistan's Civil AviationAuthority, said Afghan authorities contacted Pakistan at about 4:50 p.m. Pakistan time (1150 GMT) regarding the missing aircraft, but it had not entered Pakistani air space.

    A spokesman for the US military in Afghanistan said the plane had been reported missing to them. It had not landed at any US-led coalition airfields in Afghanistan.

    The Afghan Ministry of Transportation is to give a news conference at 11:00 a.m. Friday, possibly will make public the fate of the airplane.

    The distraught airplane carried 96 passengers and eight crew members. The airline has contacted all neighboring countries as well as ISAF and US-led coalition for help.

    The Peshawar airport authorities said later Thursday two airliners had landed in the airport, but later denied the information. Peshawar is the nearest airport that the Kam Air airplane should land at.

    Kam Air is a private airliner that started operation in November 2003. It has four Boeing 737s and some Russian-made airplanes. It is based in northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and has its maintenance base in Dubai. Except two Afghan air stewardesses, all of its crew are foreigners. A Russian airline also has a sharein the venture. Enditem