Fourteen British troops were killed in a plane crash in the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan on Saturday, an ISAF spokesman told Xinhua.

"An ISAF plane supporting ISAF and Afghan ground troops crashed Saturday, killing 14 British soldiers,"said Luke Knittig, spokesman of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). "The incident took place at 4:00 p.m. local time (1130 GMT)."

He declined to identify the plane's type, saying more information would be released by the British Defense Ministry.

However, he ruled out the involvement of hostile fire in the incident, saying, "We have no report of enemy action."

It is the second plane of ISAF, which crashed in Afghanistan over the past three days. In the previous incident, a Dutch F-16 serving NATO crashed in the southern Ghazni province on late Thursday leaving its pilot dead.

NATO and Afghan troops launched a massive operation against Taliban-linked militants in the restive Panjwai and Jalai district of Kandahar Saturday morning.

Source: Xinhua