A flaming commercial airliner crashed in northwestern Iran on Wednesday, killing all 168 people on board in the deadliest civil aviation disaster in the Islamic Republic in two decades.
Caspian Airways Flight 7908, headed from Tehran, Iran, to Yerevan, Armenia, crashed minutes before noon in the Takestan region of Iran’s Qazvin province, state media reported.
Video footage of the crash site broadcast on state television showed a huge crater created by the jet, a Russian-built TU-154 that appeared to have splintered on impact.
“Evidence shows that the plane has broken into pieces,” Gen. Massoud Jafari-Nasab told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
The crash underscored what civil aviation experts consider the dilapidated state of Iran’s fleet of aircraft and air transport industry under severe international sanctions that prevent it from purchasing Western-made Boeing or Airbus aircraft.
The U.S. has offered to lift sanctions that forbid the sale of planes with any more than 10 percent of American components as part of a deal involving a curtailing of Iran’s nuclear research program. Iranian officials repeatedly have dismissed such offers, while charging that the American posture puts the lives of ordinary travelers at risk.
Flight 7908 crashed 16 minutes after departure, Jafari-Nasab told the semi-official Fars news agency. Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for the state aviation company, told Iranian television that 153 passengers and 15 crew members were aboard and that the flight recorders — the so-called black boxes, which contain voice recordings and vital data about the plane before it crashed — had been recovered.
“We need to investigate all the factors contributing to the incident before giving further details on how the incident took place and making an expert comment,” Jafarzadeh said.
Witnesses told Fars that the plane was on fire when it hit the ground near the village of Jannatbad.
“Its wheels were out and there was fire coming from the lower parts,” Abul-Fazel Idaji told Fars. “Moments later the plane hit the ground and broke into pieces.”
In Yerevan, the deputy head of the Armenian civil aviation organization said the pilot attempted an emergency landing after an engine caught fire.
Among those killed were 10 members of the Iranian national youth judo squad traveling to Yerevan for a summer training camp. At least six of the passengers were Armenian citizens, and some were citizens of neighboring Georgia, Armenian news agencies reported.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan cut short a trip to the provinces and returned to Yerevan, the capital, as the crash was announced on public television, later declaring Thursday a day of mourning for the victims.
Yerevan’s civil aviation department set up a headquarters to begin a probe of the crash, the organization’s leader, Nelly Cherchinyan, told the Mediamax news agency.
Experts described the TU-154 plane as the Russian equivalent of the Boeing 727. The model first entered service with Russia’s Aeroflot airlines in 1972.
Despite worries about the jets’ safety record, Iran continues to buy and lease Russian planes. Officials have said they would prefer to buy American and European aircraft.
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