TASHKENT, August 16. /TASS/. Uzbekistan’s Defense Ministry has said that on Sunday it prevented an Afghan warplane from violating the country’s border, the online resource Podrobno.uz said on Monday citing the ministry’s press-service.

"Uzbekistan’s Defense Ministry has confirmed the fall of an Afghan Air Force plane in Surkhandarya. The ministry’s press-service explained to a Podrobno.uz correspondent that an attempt at violating the state border was upset. Military and law enforcement officials are pushing ahead with the probe into the incident," the news release runs.

Earlier, Gazeta.uz said that on Sunday evening a plane bearing the markings of Afghanistan’s Air Force crashed in the Sherabad district of the Surkhadarya Region. Photographs and video showing the plane’s debris and at least one injured person was uploaded to the Internet. Uzbekistan’s Defense Ministry later confirmed the very instance of the plane crash.

On Sunday, the television broadcaster Al Jazeera quoted a bodyguard of Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani as saying that the head of state had fled Afghanistan and arrived in the capital of Uzbekistan together with his wife.

On April 14, US President Joe Biden declared his decision to curtail the operation in Afghanistan, which had turned out to be the longest foreign military campaign in US history. Against this background the security situation in the country deteriorated sharply. The radical movement Taliban (outlawed in Russia) seized the capital Kabul and established control of almost the whole territory of the country.