Iran mourns victims of worst air crash in 3 years

Parinoosh Arami, Reuters:

Iran grieved on Wednesday for at least 116 people killed when a military plane hit a Tehran apartment block and burst into flames; the third air crash to kill more than a 100 people in the country in four years.

Among the dead were 68 journalists and media technicians, en route to cover military exercises in the Gulf. At least 22 of the dead were killed on the ground in their apartments or cars.

"Today is the worst day of mourning for the media, as it was unprecedented to see so many of our dear colleagues lose their lives," Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad Hossein Saffar-Harandi told the official IRNA news agency. READ MORE

Television played footage featuring some of the almost 30 state broadcasting network employees killed in the crash, which occurred on Tuesday afternoon.

"Their souls shall rest in peace and our memories of them shall remain vivid," a news anchor said.

Funerals for many of the victims were expected to be held later on Wednesday.

All 94 passengers and crew aboard the U.S.-made C-130 Hercules transport plane died, officials said.

The pilot reported engine problems minutes after take off from Tehran's Mehrabad international airport, officials said. The plane circled back for an emergency landing but did not make it to the runway, crashing into a densely-populated residential area inhabited by military families.

The Tehran Coroner's Office told the ISNA students news agency it had received 116 corpses. Twenty-eight people, some in critical condition, were taken to hospital.

"I was sitting at home when the windows suddenly smashed and flames came pouring in," a woman in her fifties with cuts on her neck, told Reuters. "There was smoke everywhere."

CALL FOR INVESTIGATION

Several children, at home because schools were closed due to a smog alert in the capital, were among the dead.

"Both the main and reserve fuel tanks were full which is why the plane went up in flames as soon as it hit the building," Iran's fire brigade chief Ahmad Ziaie told state television.

Parliament's minority opposition faction called for an immediate investigation into the cause of the crash, the latest in a string of fatal air accidents in Iran in recent years.

Air safety experts say Iran has an ageing, poorly-maintained fleet of aircraft due in part to U.S. sanctions imposed in the 1990s which prevent it from buying U.S.-built planes or spare parts.

In Iran's last major air disaster, an Iranian Ilyushin-76 troop carrier crashed in the southeast of the country on Feb. 19, 2003, killing all 276 Revolutionary Guard soldiers and crew aboard. In Feb. 2002, 119 were killed when a passenger jet hit a mountain in western Iran.

Local media carried touching tributes to colleagues who died on Tuesday.

"We hear that your burned press cards have been found, we hear that nothing is left but a few parts of a burned plane," the semi-official Fars news agency wrote of its photographer and reporter killed in the crash.

"But we still do not believe it. We still believe that if you are not here with us it is because you are off for an interview and that you will come back," it said.

"You are news-makers today, news which cost you your lives."

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Alireza Ronaghi)