Mohammad Husain Musawi, Ali Jan Ferdawsi, and Bashir Safdari have been identified as the three men who died in a plane crash near Independence, Oregon on Dec. 16, 2023, a police statement said. (Salem For Refugees)

American refugee advocates are mourning the deaths of three U.S.-trained former members of the Afghan air force who had resettled in Oregon and were seeking to become commercial pilots.

Mohammad Husain Musawi, Bashir Safdari and Ali Jan Ferdawsi were aboard a single-engine plane that crashed Saturday while flying toward a small airport in Independence, Ore., according to police.

Musawi was piloting the plane, which struck power lines in heavy fog, an Independence Police Department statement said Monday.

All three had served in the Afghan military under the U.S.-backed government that was toppled by the Taliban in 2021. They were among the tens of thousands who fled the country amid the withdrawal of American forces.

“These brave individuals served their country with unwavering dedication, flying missions under some of the most challenging conditions imaginable,” the relief agency Salem For Refugees said in an online pitch to raise money for funeral expenses.

The U.S. spent years training Afghan pilots and invested billions of dollars in the country’s air force.

The rapid collapse of the previous government in Kabul left more than 5,000 Afghan airmen and their families in need of evacuation, veterans groups and advocates said at the time.

Musawi, Safdari and Ferdawsi resettled in Salem, which is near the Independence airport, in the spring of 2022, the local refugee agency said in a statement Wednesday.

They wanted to use their experience to get licenses to fly planes commercially in the United States, according to people who knew them.

“That was their goal and dream,” Darwaish Zhakil, co-founder of the Portland-based Afghan Support Network Support, told The Oregonian newspaper Monday.

In May, Musawi obtained a private pilot’s license with a certification to fly single-engine planes, Federal Aviation Administration records show.

Musawi was a “good-natured, resourceful man” who helped transport thousands of troops and their equipment throughout Afghanistan, said Mohammed Naiem Asadi, a former pilot in the Afghan air force who also fled to America.

The pilots were so close to realizing their dreams, Asadi said Wednesday.

“It’s a very sad and tragic moment that their wish did not come true,” he said.

The three men were taking part in a pilot training program, the Salem For Refugees statement said. The organization launched the program in 2022 and had enrolled six pilots, according to a Salem Reporter story Monday.

The Salem For Refugees fundraising campaign had brought in $31,083 as of Wednesday morning. Another organization, the Afghan American Development Group, is also raising money for the same purpose.

The crash remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the Independence police statement said.

Both Musawi and Safdari were 35 years old; Ferdawsi was 29.