Weekend Australian
July 18, 2009 Saturday
3 – All-round Metro Edition
Memorial service for Aussies killed in Iran air crash
BYLINE: Lex Hall
TWO members of the Armenian-Australian community killed in an airline
crash in Iran this week will be remembered at a memorial service
tomorrow, a family friend said last night.
Although details are yet to be finalised, it’s understood the memorial
for Arin and Ani Melkomabkar will be held at an Armenian church in
Sydney’s north.
The brother and sister, both in their 20s, were among 168 people
killed when Caspian Airlines flight 7908 crashed shortly after it took
off from Tehran on Wednesday.
The plane caught fire en route to Armenia and plunged into farmland
outside a village in northwest Iran, killing all 153 passengers and 15
crew members.
Archbishop Aghan Baliozian said the Melkomabkar family were well known
for their work in Sydney’s Armenian community. “Ani was particularly
active with youth movements,” he said.
A family friend said Ms Melkomabkar devoted part of her weekends to
teaching Armenian to students at Sydney’s Toumanian Armenian Saturday
school.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing assistance to
the family, who were too distraught to be interviewed yesterday. DFAT
could not confirm any details of the repatriation of the bodies.
Another friend said the family were preparing for tomorrow’s memorial.
Iranian officials said yesterday a technical problem was to
blame. “The pilot could probably not be blamed for this crash and we
think it was likely due to a technical problem,” Ahmad Majidi, head
of the Transport Ministry’s crisis unit, was quoted by the Mehr news
agency as saying.
Iranian officials said three black boxes from the Russian-built
Tupolev airliner had also been found, but two were seriously damaged.
“Because of the severity of the accident two systems linked with the
black box have been damaged in such a way that the tapes have come out
of the boxes and scattered on the ground,” Mr Majidi said.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the pair, whose names were listed
on the flight’s passenger manifest, were dual Australian-Iranian
citizens.