Iranian plane crashes, 150 feared dead

The Caspian flight crashed 16 minutes after take-off

Hardnews Bureau

An Iranian plane carrying 150 passengers is reported to have crashed near the city of Qazvin in the northwest region of Iran. All the passengers are feared dead.

The Tupolev plane went down near Jannatabad village near Qazvin at 11:33 am local time today after it took off from the Iranian capital Tehran to fly to Yerevan in Armenia. There were 153 passengers and 15 crew on board.

"The 7908 Caspian flight crashed 16 minutes after its takeoff from the International Imam Khomeini Airport (IKIA)," Iran's Aviation Organisation spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, is quoted as saying.

Qazvin is about 140 kilometers northwest of Tehran with an estimated population of 330,000.

The Caspian Air flight number 7908, crashed 16 minutes after takeoff. It reportedly caught fire in the air and crashed. Footage of the scene of the crash site showed a huge crater in the earth scattered with pieces of the plane and tattered passports.

Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993. Iran's military forces were searching for the black-box of the airliner to ascertain the cause of the crash.

The last plane crash in Iran involving a Tupolev plane occurred in 2006. That crash occurred in Iran Air Tour flight from the port city Bandar Abbas. It crashed and caught fire in landing , a website reported. Twenty-nine of the 147 people on board died in that crash.