17 reported dead in Iran plane crash

armradio.am
25.07.2009 13:00

Thirteen of 16 people killed in a plane accident in northeastern Iran
on Friday were crew and the three others were passengers, Iran’s state
television reported on Saturday.

The passenger plane, an Ilyushin Il-62 from Kazakhstan leased by Iran’s
Aria Aviation Company, veered from the runway and hit a wall while
landing at Mashhad’s Hasheminejad Airport.

Iranian media said 30 people were injured in the accident and they were
being treated at three hospitals in the same city.

"Nine of the crew members killed in the incident were citizens of
Kazakhstan and the remaining four were Iranians," Reza Jafarzadeh, the
spokesman of Iran’s aviation organisation told the official IRNA news
agency on Saturday.

There were 153 people on board the aircraft, which had flown to Mashhad
from Tehran. Iran’s television showed images of the plane with its
front completely damaged and said the accident was due to a malfunction
in the aircraft’s wheels, Reuters reported.

Iranian media reported that the pilot was among the dead.

On July 15, a Russian-built Tupolev aircraft crashed in Iran on its way
to Armenia, after catching fire mid-air and ploughing into farmland
killing all 168 people on board. That accident, in which six Armenian
and two Georgian citizens were killed, was the worst plane crash in
Iran for six years.