Tehran (ANTARA News/AFP) - Fifty from the 105 passengers and crew on board an Iran Air plane which crashed in bad weather and broke into pieces on Sunday survived the accident, Iran`s emergency services chief and media said.
"So far no reports of death have been reported to me," emergency services head Gholam Reza Masoumi told Fars news agency. "But 50 injured people out of the 105 on board have come out of the plane alive."
The Iran Air plane crashed near the northwestern city of Orumiyeh at around 7:45 pm (1615 GMT), an official in West Azerbaijan province said, quoted on state television`s website.
"The airplane took off an hour later than scheduled time from Tehran towards Orumiyeh and because of bad weather conditions came down in a village area near Orumiyeh," the unidentified official said.
An Iranian Red Crescent official told state television that the plane hit the ground and broke into pieces. "Thankfully there was no fire," he said.
Fars said 105 people were believed to have been on board, while the aircraft was a US-built Boeing 727, according to ISNA. A third news agency, ILNA, gave a breakdown of 95 passengers and 10 crew members.
Masoumi said the rescue operation was being hampered by bad weather.
"The problem at the moment for rescue work is the heavy snow, which is around 70 centimetres (more than two feet) deep around the crash site," Fars quoted Masoumi as saying.
State news agency IRNA reported that bad weather around Orumiyeh had earlier led to the cancellation of two flights from Tehran on Sunday.
Iran Air spokesman Shahrokh Noushabadi said "we are examining the reason for the crash, but bad weather appears to be the main cause."
Iran, which has been under years of international sanctions, has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade, several of them involving small companies using Russian crew or crews from former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
Iran`s civil and military fleet is made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition because of their age and lack of maintenance.
In its worst air accident, a plane carrying members of Iran`s elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in February 2003, killing 302 people on board.
In July 2009, a Soviet-designed Tupolev caught fire in mid-air and plunged flaming into farmland northeast of Tehran, killing all 168 people on board.
And in December 2005, a total of 108 people were killed when a Lockheed transport plane crashed into a high-rise housing block outside Tehran.
In November 2006, a military plane crashed on takeoff at Tehran`s Mehrabad airport, killing all 39 people on board, including 30 members of the Revolutionary Guards. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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