IRAN-ARMENIA PLANE CRASHES: 168 REPORTED TO BE KILLED

armradio.am
15.07.2009 15:10

A passenger plane heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan
crashed near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin,
around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, state television said.

The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour tells the
IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered
to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It is highly likely that
all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said.

Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh had
told state television that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were
on the Russian-made Caspian Airlines jet that had been headed from
Tehran to the Armenian capital yerevan.

A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the
passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizen and other
nationalities were on board.

Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded
in 1993. Iran has frequent plane crashes, which it blames
on U.S. sanctions on the country that prevent it from getting
spare parts for aging airplanes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses
Russian-made aircraft whose maintenance would be less impaired by
American sanctions.