Posted on 02/12/2002 6:23:05 AM PST by blam
Tuesday, 12 February, 2002, 15:00 GMT
Iran plane crash 'kills 117'
A plane has crashed into snow-covered mountains near the western Iranian city of Khorramabad, reportedly killing all 117 people on board.
A government official told Reuters news agency that four government officials and two foreigners were among those who perished on the Tupolev 154, which disappeared from radar screens while flying from Tehran to Khorramabad on Tuesday morning.
The plane was totally destroyed and scattered in small pieces across the mountain
The aircraft was operated by Iran Air Tours, a subsidiary of the state carrier Iran Air.
A local resident told Reuters that the plane had crashed into a mountain close to the airport as it was landing in the city about 375 kilometres (230 miles) south-west of the capital.
He said: "The plane was totally destroyed and scattered in small pieces across the mountain."
Dozens of relatives of the passengers gathered at Tehran Mehrabad Airport.
"Where are you? What happened to you," shouted Nasrin Shafiiyan, beating her face and chest, as she waited tearfully for information about the fate of her husband Houshang, who was on the plane.
A local official in Cheghini, 35km (21 miles) from Khorramabad, told the French news agency AFP that the wheels and other pieces of the plane had been located near the village of Sarab-Doreh, west of Khorramabad.
Previous crashes
July 2001 - 143 die on Tu-154 near Irkutsk, Russia May 2001 - 30 die on Russian-built Yak-40 in northern Iran February 1993 - 132 die when Tu-154 crashes into military plane near Tehran
He said mountaineers would be needed to recover the bodies from the area.
A statement from the Civil Aviation Organisation of Iran said heavy snow in the region, which lies east of the Zagros mountain range, was preventing search teams from reaching the scene of the crash.
Villagers in the mountainous Yaft-e Kouh area heard a "big explosion" after the plane went down, state radio said.
Ageing fleet
There was no immediate information on the cause of the crash, but Iranian television reported that President Mohammad Khatami had ordered the formation of an emergency committee to investigate the accident.
The BBC Tehran correspondent says the weather in the region is not too bad, which will raise questions about why the crash happened.
It is the latest in a series of incidents involving ageing Russian-built aircraft leased by companies in Iran.
In May 2001, all 30 passengers on board a chartered Russian-built Yak-40 died when it crashed on a flight to the north-east of the country.
Sanctions blamed
Among the dead then were the transport minister and all seven members of the region's parliament.
Officials blamed the crash on bad weather and pilot error.
Another Tu-154 plane crashed near Irkutsk in Russia last July, killing all 133 passengers and 10 crew members aboard.
Under US sanctions, Iran has had difficulty obtaining spare parts for its ageing fleet of Boeing aircraft purchased before the 1979 Islamic revolution and relies increasingly on planes leased from the former Soviet Union.
Iran has said the US stance on spare parts endangers the lives of innocent passengers.
It's already been deemed our fault for not letting them get spare parts.
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