29 dead as plane catches fire in Iran: state TV

By Alireza Ronaghi

TEHRAN (Reuters) – An Iranian airliner caught fire after a
tire burst on landing at an airport in the northeast of the
country on Friday, killing 29 of the 148 people aboard, state
television said.

Earlier reports had suggested a death toll of 80.

Nourollah Rezai-Niaraki, head of Iran’s civil aviation
organization, told state TV that 43 people on board the plane
had been injured but the rest escaped unharmed.

Television pictures showed a broken-up plane with parts of
its fuselage charred. The cockpit appeared to be largely
unaffected by the fire, as did much of the rear portion of the
aircraft.

Firefighters were shown extinguishing fires in parts of the
smoldering wreck and clambering over other areas of the
fuselage, carrying out corpses covered in blankets.

The plane, a Russian-built Tupolev 154, caught fire at 1.45
p.m. (1015 GMT) after slipping off the side of the runway when
a tire burst on landing at the city of Masshad, site of Iran’s
holiest shrine, state media said.

“The flight crew and the pilot of this flight survived, and
this will be a great help to find out the cause of the accident
as soon as possible,” Roads and Transport Minister Mohammad
Rahmati told Iran’s students news agency ISNA.

An Iranairtour official, who asked not to be identified,
said the airline was contacting families of the victims. He
also said flights to Mashhad had been canceled after the crash.

PILGRIMS

Pilgrims flock to Mashhad throughout the year to visit the
tomb of Imam Reza, the eighth Muslim Shi’ite imam. It was not
clear if any of those on board the Iranairtour flight were
making the pilgrimage.

The southern city of Bandar Abbas, where the plane began
its journey, is the Islamic Republic’s main port and is located
near the popular Iranian holiday destination of Qeshm island.

Air safety experts say Iran has a poor safety record with a
string of crashes in recent decades, many involving
Russian-made aircraft.

U.S. sanctions on the Islamic state have prevented it from
buying new aircraft or spares from the West, forcing it to
supplement its aging fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes with
aircraft from the former Soviet Union.

The last major plane disaster in Iran involved a military
plane which crashed in January, killing at least 11 people.
Another military plane hit a tower block in Tehran in December,
killing 94 people on board and at least 22 people on the
ground.

The most recent Iranian civil aviation disaster involved a
Kish airlines Fokker-50 plane, which crashed in February 2004
during landing in Sharjah airport in the United Arab Emirates
killing 43 of the 45 passengers and crew aboard.