An Iranian regional passenger plane crashed on Sunday while taking off from Tehran, killing 39 and injuring another nine onboard, according to a senior transportation official and state media.
Deputy Minister of Transportation Ahmad Majidi provided the latest casualty figures in an appearance on state TV. The channel earlier reported that all 48 people onboard had died.
The aircraft, an IrAn-140 crashed near Tehran’s Mehrabad airport. The plane went down in a residential area after one of its engines went out, IRNA news agency reported.
The plane was operated by Sepahan Air and was heading to Tabas, a town in eastern Iran. It took off at 9.20 am local time and crashed shortly afterward.
State TV said the bodies of some of the victims were so badly burned that they could not be identified. They will be handed over to relatives after DNA tests are carried out to determine their identities, it said.
Members of the Revolutionary Guard worked to secure the crash site and security and rescue personnel combed the wreckage as onlookers gathered shortly after the plane went down. The plane’s mangled but largely intact tail section was torn from the fuselage and came to rest on a nearby road.
The last major airliner crash in Iran happened in January 2011, when an Iran Air Boeing 727 broke to pieces on impact while trying an emergency landing in a snowstorm in north-western Iran, killing at least 77 people.
In July 2009, a Russian-made jetliner crashed in north-west Iran shortly after taking off from the capital, killing all 168 on board. A Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the Revolutionary Guard crashed in the mountains of south-eastern Iran in February 2003, killing 302 people aboard.
