TEHRAN, Iran - A landing Iranian passenger plane skidded off the runway and
raked its wing along the ground, sparking a fire that killed 29 of the 148
people on board Friday in the latest deadly crash of a Russian-made aircraft.
Iranian officials work
at the site of the crashed plane at the airport in the city of Mashhad 540
miles (900 kilometers) northeast of the capital Tehran, Iran, Friday,
Sept. 1, 2006. A jetliner blew a tire, skidded off a runway and caught
fire while landing in northeastern Iran on Friday, killing up to 80 of the
147 passengers aboard, Iranian state TV reported.
[AP] |
Rescue workers in the northeastern city of Mashhad carried survivors on
stretchers out of the gutted craft, which lay in a pool of water near the runway
with its middle charred and its roof collapsed. Iranian television footage
showed firefighters spraying the engines with water.
"The plane was shaking badly during the landing, then it suddenly lurched to
the left," one survivor, Sahar Karimi, told The Associated Press by telephone
from a hospital in Mashhad.
"Then it caught fire, and all the passengers rushed to the emergency exit,"
she said.
State television reported that a tire exploded as the plane landed, but the
spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organization, Reza Jafarzadeh, said
investigators had not confirmed that and it was still not clear what caused the
plane to slide off the runway.
The 11 crew members survived, "and this can help the investigation team to
reach its conclusions sooner," he said.
The flight by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national air
carrier — was arriving from Bandar Abbas on Iran's southern coast when the
accident occurred.
The plane slid off the runway, "then its left wing hit the ground and caught
fire," civil aviation chairman Nourollah Rezai Niaraki said in a television
interview.
He said 29 passengers were killed, correcting an earlier television report of
80 dead.
The craft was a Russian-made Tupolev 154. A Tu-154 owned by Russia's Pulkovo
Airlines crashed in Ukraine on Aug. 22 while en route from a Russian resort to
St. Petersburg, killing all 170 people on board.
In 2002, a Russian-made Tu-154 — also operated by Iran Airtour — crashed in
the mountains of western Iran, killing all 119 people aboard.
Mashhad, located 620 miles northeast of Tehran, is visited by some 12 million
people a year on pilgrimage to its Shiite Islamic shrines. It was not clear if
Friday's flight included pilgrims.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued condolences to the families of
the victims, while state radio read off the names of hospitals where the injured
had been taken.
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