Iranian Plane Crashes, All 168 on Board Believed Dead

July 15, 2009

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Iranian state media say a passenger plane has crashed in northwestern Iran, killing all 168 people on board.

State television said Wednesday the Iranian airliner was heading to the Armenian capital of Yerevan when it went down near the northern Iranian city of Qazvin. Media reports say the plane crashed 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport.

Video footage shows a field littered with small pieces of smoking wreckage from the Caspian Airlines plane.

Officials say the plane was carrying 153 passengers and 15 crew members.

Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture that was founded in the early 1990s.

Iran has frequent plane crashes, often due to poor maintenance of aging planes.

In the past, Tehran has blamed its plane problems in part on U.S. sanctions that it says prevents Iran from getting spare parts. But Caspian airliners are Russian made planes whose maintenance would be less impaired by U.S. sanctions.

VOA News; Video: CNN