29 die in Iran air disaster, 148 survive
Afp, Tehran
Twenty-nine people were killed yesterday when an Iranian airliner caught fire after landing in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran's civil aviation chief said, lowering earlier reports of up to 80 dead. Talking to state television, the Civil Aviation Organization's Nurollah Rezai Niaraki said 29 bodies had been recovered from the plane, 43 people were injured and the rest of the 148 people on board survived unhurt. He added that some of those injured had been treated as out-patients at Mashhad hospitals. State television had earlier said the death toll on the flight to Mashhad from the southern port city of Bandar Abbas was at least 80. Niaraki also said that since the flight crew survived the crash, a better understanding on the cause of the accident will surface. Previously state media reported that the Russian-made Tupolev 154, on an internal flight from the southern port of Bandar Abbas, skidded off the runway and crashed into the nearby barriers, leaving gaping holes in the fuselage. The incident was the latest tragedy to hit Iran's aviation industry, whose fleet is made up largely of Soviet or old Western planes owing to the US sanctions imposed after the Islamic revolution in 1979. According to figures published in the Iranian media and not counting Friday's accident in Mashhad, more than 1,460 people were killed in 17 air crashes in the past 25 years, including an Iranian plane shot down over the Gulf by a US warship in 1988. The first television pictures showed the plane, owned by the Iran Airtours carrier, lying flat without its wheels on the outskirts of the airport, with one huge hole burned out in the centre of the fuselage. Rescue workers used hoses to douse the plane, turning the ground around into a quagmire of mud and water. Several corpses were on the ground beside the plane, swathed in blankets. "As the plane was landing one of its tyres burst, forcing to it to swerve off the runway before hitting nearby barriers and bursting into flames," an airport official in Mashhad told AFP. An Iranian civil aviation official was quoted in the media as saying the plane did not ask for an emergency landing before the accident. US sanctions mean that Iran can only shop for Airbus or Boeing planes on the used market, and Iranian officials have blamed the blockade for the regular plane crashes in the Islamic republic. Iranian media are reporting that regular flights have been resumed in Mashhad international airport. The sanctions cover not only US-made airplanes and spare parts, but also European ones, like Airbus, when they use significant elements of US origin.
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