JANNATABAD, Iran: An Iranian airliner en route to Armenia caught fire midair and plunged flaming into farmland Wednesday, killing all 168 people on board in the worst air disaster in Iran in years.
Witnesses and state media said the Caspian Airlines plane was ablaze before smashing into the ground and exploding near a village northeast of Tehran shortly after taking off from the capital’s international airport. TV images showed a vast crater at the disaster site littered with debris of plane parts, shoes and clothes.
Standing next to a body bag filled with human flesh, a relief worker told an AFP reporter at the site: “All I found were pieces of flesh and bones. There is not a single piece which can be identified. There is not a single finger of anybody left.”
“All people aboard the crashed plane are dead. The plane had 153 passengers and 15 crew members,” said Mohammad Reza Montazer Khorasan, head of the Health Ministry’s Disaster Management Center.
In Yerevan, the deputy head of the Armenian civil aviation organization, Arsen Pogossian, told a press conference that of the 153 passengers aboard, 147 were Iranian, of whom 31 were of Armenian origin. The remaining six were four Armenians and two Georgians. Iranian officials said 10 members of Iran’s junior national judo team were also among those killed.
Pogossian said the pilot had attempted an emergency landing after an engine caught fire. “A fire broke out in one engine, and the pilot attempted an emergency landing,” Pogossian said, while stressing that his comment was “not an official version” of what had occurred. Witnesses too spoke of seeing the plane on fire before it plunged to earth.
“I saw the plane when it was just ... above the ground. Its wheels were out and there was fire blazing from the lower parts,” witness Ablolfazl Idaji said, according to the Fars agency.
“It seemed the pilot was trying to land and moments later the plane hit the ground and broke into pieces that were scattered far and wide.”
The stench of smoke was still in the air hours after the crash and police were preventing people, most of them local villagers and relatives of the dead, from reaching the crash site.
“I hate these planes. With so much travel between Iran and Armenia there have to be better planes,” said a distraught 24-year-old man who gave his name only as Alex and said he had lost around a dozen friends and relatives in the crash.
“Have you ever flown in a Caspian plane?” asked another man who was mourning the death of a relative. “Its seats are rickety. I don’t trust them (the planes).” The Tupolev Tu-154 plane is a Soviet-designed, medium-range three-engine aircraft. It was a best seller for the Russian aircraft industry between 1972 and 1994.
About 30 relatives and friends of passengers gathered at Yerevan airport, many of them in tears, where teams were on hand to give assistance and information.
