Up to 80 killed when Iranian jetliner catches fire
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A passenger plane caught fire as it was landing Friday in northeastern Iran, killing up to 80 people, Iranian state TV reported.
The plane skidded off the runway as it landed in Mashhad and caught fire, television said. It said earlier that a tire had blown on the aircraft during landing.
The flight, by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated to Iran's national air carrier, originated in Bandar Abbas, in the south of the country.( Map of crash site)
The Russian-made Tu-154 was carrying 147 passengers. None of the crew members died in the fire, and other passengers were evacuated, state TV reported. (Watch how plane burned, split in two -- 2:34)
Footage at Mashhad's airport showed rescue workers carrying bodies on stretchers from the badly charred central portion of the plane.The aircraft did not appear to be on fire, but firefighters doused its engines using hoses. Dozens of bodies lay nearby covered with blankets.
Iran has frequent plane accidents and has several times blamed them on U.S. sanctions that it says make it difficult to import spare parts, even from Europe. The West offered to open the door to sales of new planes and spare parts in an incentive package aimed at getting it to roll back its nuclear program.
State TV later said that the death toll was between 70 and 80 and that 50 to 60 passengers were evacuated from the aircraft, some with minor injuries.
But a spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organization, Reza Jafarzadeh, said that the death toll and the cause of the incident were not yet clear.
Mashhad, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northeast of Tehran, is visited by 12 million people annually on pilgrimage to its Shiite Islamic shrines.
In December 2005, a military C-130 loaded with Iranian journalists crashed into a 10-story apartment building in a Tehran suburb as the pilot attempted an emergency landing after developing engine trouble, killing 115 people -- 94 in the plane and 21 on the ground.
In April 2005, an Iranian military Boeing 707 with 157 people aboard skidded off a runway at Tehran airport and caught fire, killing three people. In 2003, a Russian-made Il-76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people.
In 2002, a Ukrainian-built aircraft carrying aerospace scientists crashed in central Iran, killing all 44 people aboard.
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