Iran plane crash: All 66 passengers and crew members on board feared dead

All 66 people on board an Iranian passenger plane are feared dead after it crashed in the Zagros mountains
AFP/Getty Images
Ella Wills18 February 2018

Sixty-six people are feared to have been killed in a passenger plane crash in Iran.

An Aseman Airlines plane came down in the Zagros mountains near to its destination of Yasuj, south Iran.

Flight EP 3704 took off from Tehran at 4.33am GMT and gave its last signal at 5.55am GMT, , when the flight was at 16,975 feet and was descending, FlightRadar 24 said.

The plane crashed into Mount Dena, which is around 44-metres (1,440ft tall), the airline said.

The airline retracted a statement saying that all on board were dead. Spokesman Mohammad Taqi Tabatabayee told state media the company could not yet confirm this.

Mr Tabatabayee told Iranian Fars News: "Given the hard (geographical) situation of the region, we have not been yet able to access the crash site and therefore, the death of all passengers of the plane cannot be confirmed precisely and firmly yet."

Iran's Red Crescent sent search and rescue teams to the site, and a number of drones were deployed to the crash site, according to reports.

The plane was a French-made ATR-72, a twin-engine turboprop used for short-distance regional flying.

There were 59 adults and one child, as well as a pilot, a co-pilot, two flight attendants and two air marshals on board.

Bad weather affected rescue efforts as helicopters were unable to reach the crash site.

Emergency services head Pir Hossein Kulivand was quoted as saying crews had to travel to the scene by land.

Aseman Airlines, owned by Iran's civil service pension foundation, is a semi-private air carrier headquartered in Tehran that specializes in flights to remote airfields across the country.

Previously, Aseman Airlines suffered one other major crash with fatalities.

In October 1994, a twin-propeller Fokker F-28 1000 commuter plane flown by the airline crashed near Natanz, 290 kilometres (180 miles) south of Tehran, also killing 66 people abroad.

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