Bagram Plane Crash Video Surfaces; 7 Dead After Cargo Plane Crashes In Afghanistan Airfield

Seven Americans on board a civilian cargo plane, which was flying out of the Bagram air field in Afghanistan, were killed on Monday when the plane crashed. There were no survivors.

Today a video capturing the plane's horrifying crash surfaced. Click here to see it -- though discretion is advised.

Wired.com reports that Pentagon officials reacted with astonishment and horror at the video and cited a source in the Navy in writing that the military command in Afghanistan is currently "looking into the authenticity of the video".

The camera which records the video appears to be mounted somewhere in the front of a vehicle driving on a road near the air base. It comes to a stop several seconds before the plane begins its descent. After the plane crashes, occasioning a fiery explosion, the vehicle races down the road toward the wreckage, from which flames spew black smoke. Curiously, the crash produces little audible reaction from inside the vehicle.

National Air Cargo, the contractors of the Boeing 747 plane, said the flight was bound for Dubai and carried unspecified vehicles and other cargo. Early reports are indicating that the crew on board had mentioned the cargo had shifted -- as the positioning of cargo weight is key to any airplane's ability to fly, this is widely being presented as a possibility for the plane's crash. The aircraft is seen in the video to pitch up heavily and stall before it plunges to the ground, a possible course of action if the cargo had slid toward the tail of the plane and shifted the center of gravity toward the back of the craft.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the crash on Monday, but the United States-led military coalition in Afghanistan dismissed the claim in a statement to AP News. The coalition said there had been no militant activity during the time of the crash, and that the true cause of the accident was still being investigated.

The Bagram air field is one of the largest coalition military bases in Afghanistan, located near the town of Bagram and about 25 miles north of Kabul, the Afghan capital. It was first built during the Cold War by the Afghan government with support from the United States and served as a key military hub during the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of the country.