KABUL (Reuters) - A US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet crashed in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the US Air Force said, and a military source said both crew members on board were killed. The Air Force said in a statement that the crash, which took place at 3:15 am local time (2245 GMT on Friday), was not due to hostile action. There is an active investigation going on at the site at this time, Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Reid Christopherson said by telephone from Qatar, the main base of US air operations in the ME and Central Asia. Mohammad Qasim Nazari, chief of the Nawur district of Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, said the crash had taken place in a remote desert area of the district. He said US forces had sealed off the area. Christopherson declined to discuss the status of the two crew members, but a military source in Kabul confirmed they had been killed. The source asked not to be identified pending the Air Forces official announcement of the deaths. The Strike Eagle is a variant of the F-15 supersonic jet designed to strike ground targets and provide close air support for infantry. It has been deployed widely in both Afghanistan and Iraq. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said by telephone from an undisclosed location that the militants had shot the plane down, and claimed it was a transport plane with a number of troops on board, not a fighter. We used the same weapons we have used in 30 years of jihad, he said. The Taliban generally claim responsibility for all Western military air crashes in Afghanistan, however they are not known to possess missiles that can shoot down supersonic jets.