A BOEING 727 with state-run Iran Air crashed yesterday near a northwestern city in bad weather and broke up, killing at least 70 of the 105 people aboard, state media reported.
“Based on information received so far, 70 people have been killed and 32 injured in the crash,” Heydar Heydari, deputy head of the Iranian Red Crescent humanitarian movement, told state news agency IRNA.
A separate news agency, quoting a senior medical official, also reported that 70 people were killed in the crash. “The bodies of 70 victims were transferred to the provincial coroner’s office,” the official told the Mehr news agency.
The plane with the Islamic republic’s national carrier crashed near the northwestern city of Orumiyeh about 7.45pm local time, an official in West Azerbaijan province said, quoted on state television’s website.
“The aeroplane took off an hour later than scheduled time from Tehran towards Orumiyeh and because of bad weather conditions came down in a village area near Orumiyeh,” the unidentified official said. The governor-general of West Azerbaijan, Vahid Jalalzadeh, told state television that the dead and injured had been transferred to different hospitals in Orumiyeh.
Giving sketchy details of the crash, Jalalzadeh said the pilot had lost contact with the airport before the airliner disappeared off the radar.
“Then the plane crashed near the village and villagers told the authorities about the crash site. Some passengers were able to get out of the plane themselves, and villagers took several passengers to hospitals,” he said. Another Iranian Red Crescent official told state television that the plane hit the ground and broke into pieces. “Thankfully there was no fire,” he said.
State television footage of the crash showed the airliner broken into three pieces, which lay buried in thick snow. Iran Air spokesman Shahrokh Noushabadi said “we are examining the reason for the crash, but bad weather appears to be the main cause”.
An official with the transport ministry told state television that one of the aircraft’s two black boxes had been recovered, and this would help determine the cause of the crash.
The Fars news agency said 105 people were believed to have been on board, and the ISNA news service reported the aircraft was a US-built Boeing 727. A third news agency, ILNA, gave a breakdown of 95 passengers and 10 crew members. Head of Iran’s State Emergency Centre Gholam-Reza Masoumi said the rescue operation was being hampered by bad weather.
“The problem at the moment for rescue work is the heavy snow, which is around 70cm deep around the crash site,” Fars quoted him as saying. IRNA reported that bad weather around Orumiyeh had led to the cancellation of two flights from Tehran yesterday.
Iran, which has been under years of international sanctions, has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade, several involving small companies using Russian crew or crews from former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
The country’s civil and military fleet is made up of ancient aircraft in poor condition because of their age and lack of maintenance. In Iran’s worst air accident, a plane carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in February 2003, killing 302 people on board.
In July 2009, a Soviet-designed Tupolev caught fire in mid-air and plunged flaming into farmland northeast of Tehran, killing all 168 people on board. And in December 2005, 108 people were killed when a Lockheed transport plane crashed into a high-rise housing block outside Tehran.
In November 2006, a military plane crashed on take-off at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, killing all 39 people on board, including 30 members of the Revolutionary Guards.
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