168 people killed in Iran plane crash

Slides
Photos

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-15 20:01

TEHRAN: An Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering into flaming pieces. All on board were killed in Iran's worst air disaster in six years, officials said.

In this photo released by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), an unidentified man observes the scene of a plane crash near the village of Jannatabad, outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran in Iran, Wednesday, July 15, 2009. [Agencies]

Before crashing, the plane's tail was on fire as it circled in the air, one witness told The Associated Press.

"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Then, plane pieces were scattered all over the agricultural fields," Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old who was laying gas pipes in a nearby home, told AP by phone.

The impact blasted a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage, body parts and personal items from the Tupolev jet, according to photos from the scene. Firefighters put out the flaming wreckage, which officials said was strewn over a 200 yard (meter) area. A large chunk of a wing was visible in footage of the scene, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small shreds.

Iran has seen numerous crashes in recent years, usually blamed on poor maintenance. Iranian officials often blame US sanctions that prevent it from updating American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well.

Map locating Qazvin in northwestern Iran, where a Caspian Airlines aircraft with up to 169 people on board crashed on Wednesday. [Agencies]

Iranian airlines and the military have turned increasingly to Russian aircraft, which are not affected by sanctions, but have seen a string of accidents. Two other Tupolev crashes in Iran this decade have killed nearly 140 people.

The Caspian Airlines Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on Wednesday morning and was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. It crashed at 11:30 am about 16 minutes after takeoff near the village of Jannat Abad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state media.

At Yerevan's airport, Tina Karapetian, 45, said she had been waiting for her sister and the sister's 6- and 11-year-old sons, who were due on the flight. "What will I do without them?" she said, weeping, before she collapsed to the floor.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Hossein Ayaznia, an aviation police official, said emergency workers were searching for the plane's data recorders to get evidence of the cause.

Iran's Jafarzadeh and the deputy chairman of Armenia's civil aviation authority Arsen Pogosian said there were 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers on board the plane. "In all likelihood, all on board were killed," Pogosian told reporters at Yerevan airport.

Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Iran's large ethnic Armenian community, along with six Armenian citizens and two Georgian citizens, Pogosian said. The two Georgians included a staffer from the Caucasus nation's embassy in Yerevan, Georgia's military attache in the Armenian capital said.

Undated file photo of a Caspian Airlines' Tu-154M jet plane. [sina.com]

Serob Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan airport's aviation security service, said the plane may have attempted an emergency landing, but reports that it caught fire in the air were "only one version." He did not elaborate. A police official told Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency that several witnesses reported seeing the plane's tail on fire in the air as it circled to find a place to land.

The plane was completely destroyed in the crash and shattered to pieces, Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Behzadpour told the state news agency IRNA.

"The force of the crash was so serious that pieces of the aircraft were thrown over a 200 meter area. Unfortunately, all the bodies were totally destroyed," Behzadpour said.

Previous page 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next Page