Kabul, Afghanistan ? As temperatures plunged overnight, fears grew Friday that no one would be found alive after an Afghan passenger jet carrying 104 people, including three Americans, disappeared from radar screens during a snowstorm near the mountain-ringed Afghan capital.

NATO forces suspended their ground and air search for the night as darkness closed in, and planned to resume looking today.

Afghan National Army and Afghan police search the area for a missing Afghan plane southeast of Kabul. As darkness closed in Friday, NATO and Afghan forces suspended their ground and air search for an Afghan passenger jet carrying 104 people. The plane disappeared Thursday from radar screens during a snowstorm near the mountain-ringed capital.

The Kam Air Boeing 737-200 took off Thursday from the western city of Herat bound for Kabul, but was unable to land because of poor visibility. The airline initially said the plane was diverted to neighboring Pakistan, but officials there said it never reached their airspace.

Transport Minister Enayatullah Qasemi said the pilot last contacted the Kabul control tower about 3 p.m. Thursday to ask for a weather update. Bagram Air Base, the U.S. military base north of Kabul with overall responsibility for Afghan airspace, cleared the plane for landing, but moments later it disappeared from radar screens.

Afghanistan’s NATO peacekeeping force sent helicopters and ground teams to scour an area southeast of the city, where officials said the plane was last seen Thursday. But they returned to base empty-handed amid freezing fog.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry official in Ankara, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkish military officers in Kabul reported wreckage had been found southeast of there. The country’s air force is in charge of the Kabul airport as part of the NATO peacekeeping mission.

But NATO and Afghan officials denied the report. French Lt. Col. Patrick Poulain, a spokesman at NATO headquarters in Kabul, said helicopters had failed to even pick up a signal from the aircraft’s rescue beacon.

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He held out little hope that anyone would be found alive today.

“With the snowstorm of last night, it would not be easy to survive,” he said.