Five people have been injured, including ambassadors of Poland and the Netherlands.
The convoy of three helicopters was carrying a delegation of foreign diplomats and their aides to Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan territory, which is part of the disputed Kashmir region.
One of the helicopters crashed on a school in northern Pakistan.
"The helicopter was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile, killing pilots and many foreign ambassadors," AFP quotes an Urdu-language statement emailed by Taliban main spokesman Muhammad Khorasani as saying.
"A special group of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had prepared a special plan to target Nawaz Sharif during his visit but he survived because he was travelling in another helicopter," Khorasani added.
Officials have not yet commented on the Taliban claim. The ministry of defense issued a statement saying it was investigating the cause of the crash.
The nationalities of the foreigners are currently being investigated.
“It was a diplomatic trip with members of 37 countries in total,” the media is quoting one of the passengers as saying, without disclosing his name, addding that the school had caught fire after the crash.
“We have been told to send in as many ambulances as we can because the situation there is ‘urgent’,” said a senior official.
The injured were being air lifted to a military hospital in Gilgit, the region’s administrative capital, some 50km to the south-west, added another senior local police official.
An earlier statement by Sharif`s office had said that the prime minister was on a plane, not helicopter, en route to the Gilgit area at the time of the attack, but turned back to Islamabad after news of the crash broke.
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