Caspian Airlines Jet Crashes in Northwest Iran; All 150 People Die
An airplane with 150 passengers on board crashed in northwest Iran and everybody on board was feared killed, reported state media.
According to state television reports, the Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan when it crashed near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran.
The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour tells the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. “It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed,” Bahzadpour said. He did not give a number, but state TV said 150 were on the flight.
Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993. Iran has frequent plane crashes, which it blames on U.S. sanctions on the country that prevent it from getting spare parts for aging airplanes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses Russian-made aircraft whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions.
