Tehran, July 16: A Tupolev passenger aircraft crashed in northwestern Iran on Wednesday on its way to neighbouring country Armenia and all 168 people on board were killed, Iranian media reported.
“There were 151 adults, 2 children and 15 crew members on the plane,” Caspian Airline’s representative in Yerevan Arlen Davudyan told Reuters at Yerevan Airport.
“15 or 16 minutes after take-off, the plane fell near the Iranian city Qazvin about 150 km north of Tehran,” he said, adding it was a Tu-154 aircraft. He further added that the cause of the crash was not clear and the black box had not yet been found.
The Caspian Airlines plane was carrying 153 passengers and 15 crew, Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran’s aviation organisation, told state television. The plane was travelling from Tehran to Yerevan in Armenia.
Crying relatives gathered at Yerevan airport and on one wall a notice listed people who were on board. A senior Iranian provincial official, Sirous Saberi, said the aircraft had experienced technical problems and had tried to do an emergency landing.
Unfortunately, the plane caught fire in the air and it crashed,” he told semi-official Fars News Agency. Eight members of Iran’s national junior judo team and two coaches were among the dead, the semi-official Mehr News Agency said.
“There was an explosion which left an indentation 10 metres deep in the ground. There was nothing we could do. We tried to put out the fire as best we could,” he said.
Television pictures also showed a large crater gouged into farmland with mangled pieces of metal scattered around. Smoke rose from the site as police and bystanders gathered around.
“The Tupolev plane has been totally destroyed and the corpses, unfortunately, have been totally burnt and destroyed. All on board are dead,” Qazvin police commander Massoud Jafarinasab told Fars. It is pertinent to mention here that the US planemaker Boeing Co has not exported a plane to Iran since 1979, when the US government imposed sanctions against Tehran.
–Agencies–