Nearly 77 killed in Iran air crash
Remaining 28 people injured:
IRAN: Seventy-seven people, including 12 crew members, were killed
when a passenger plane with 105 people on board crashed Sunday evening
in northwest Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency reported early
Monday morning.
The remaining 28 people were injured, some in bad condition, Fars
quoted the latest report of the Coroner Office of Iran’s West Azerbaijan
province as saying.
The Boeing-727, belonging to the state-owned Iran-Air airline, had
been delayed twice due to bad weather in Tehran, which saw brief snow
Sunday morning, said an earlier report by Fars.
The plane took off from Tehran Mehrabad airport at 18:00 local time
(1230 GMT) and was about to arrive at the city of Uroumieh at 19:45
local time (1615 GMT). But it crashed near a village some 15 km from
Uroumieh minutes before landing, Mr. Jalalzadeh, governor of West
Azerbaijan, told Iran state IRINN TV. “Ten minutes before the plane
arrived at the Uroumieh airport, the pilot informed the airport control
tower that it cannot land due to the bad whether condition ... and after
that it disappeared from the radar,” said Jalalzadeh.
Local villagers reported the crash to the authorities, took the
injured people out of the plane and rushed them to the nearest
hospitals. So far, all the injured passengers had been taken to the
hospitals nearby, Jalalzadeh added. However, another report by Meher
news agency quoted the political deputy of West Azerbaijan governor
Ebrahim Fathollahi as saying that in his last conversation with the
control tower, the pilot said his plane had a technical problem.
The plane crashed and broke into pieces during an emergency landing
when there was a low visibility, Fathollahi said.
There were no Chinese passengers on the plane, Chinese embassy
officials in Tehran told Xinhua.
Iran has been struck by several air disasters in recent years,
involving both civilian- and military-use aircraft.
In July 2009, a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the northwestern
city of Qazvin, killing all 168 people on board. TEHRAN, Monday, Xinhua
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