A passenger plane with 105 passengers onboard crashed Sunday evening in northwest Iran and 72 passengers, including 12 crew members, were killed, the semi- official Fars news agency reported early Monday morning.
According to the latest report of the Coroner office of Iran's West Azerbaijan province, of the 105 onboard 33 others were injured, said Fars.
The Boeing-727, belonging to the state-owned Iran-Air airliners, had been delayed twice due to bad weather in Tehran, which saw brief snow on 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) when it crashed near a village, some 15 kilometers from Uroumieh, Jalalzadeh, the Govrner of West Azerbaijan told Iran state IRINN TV.
"10 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.
However, in another report by Meher news agency, the political deputy of West Azerbaijan governor, said that the last conversation of the pilot with the control tower revealed that, before the emergency landing, he had announced that his plane had faced a technical problem.
Upon emergency landing and due to the lack of clear vision of the site, the plane crashed and broke into the pieces, Ebrahim Fathollahi told Mehr.
The plane crashed in the village area and the villagers were the first to know about the incident, to inform the rescue officials and were the first to take the injured people out of the plane and take them to the nearest hospitals, the governor of West Azerbaijan told IRINN TV.
All of the injured passengers and the killed ones were evacuated to the hospitals nearby, he said.
In the past, Iran's airlines have suffered a number of flight disasters, both civil and military use.
In July 2009, a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the northwestern city of Qazvin, killing all 168 people on board.
Experts believe that the U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iran, which prevented its allies from selling aircraft or aircraft parts to the country, have undermined safety standards within Iran's civil and military aviation fleet and are increasing the likelihood of more major air disasters.
Xinhua/ Editor: yan
