AFP: An Iranian military plane crashed early Monday at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport killing 36 people including 30 members of the Revolutionary Guards, state television reported quoting a statement by the force. TEHRAN, Nov 27, 2006 (AFP) – An Iranian military plane crashed early Monday at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport killing 36 people including 30 members of the Revolutionary Guards, state television reported quoting a statement by the force.
The report read on television added that there were 30 revolutionary guards and six crew on board and another two were injured and taken to hospital.
“It crashed at the end of the runway, at 7:30 local time (0400 GMT),” the spokesman for the Iranian civil aviation organization, Reza Jafarzadeh, was quoted as saying on Fars news agency.
There were no survivors when the Antonov 74 aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff, the director of the airport told the TV channel.
The plane was heading for Shiraz in the south of Iran, the television said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are the Islamic regime’s ideological army.
Mehrabad international airport is used for civil and military purposes. It is situated in a western district of the capital.
With Monday’s crash and a military helicopter crash which occurred a week ago killing six people on board, since 2003 and according to an AFP tally there were six military crashes resulting in more than 450 people killed; however not all were military staff.
Around a week ago, six people were killed in a military helicopter crash in the central Iranian town of Najafabad near the ancient city of Isfahan. No further details about the accident were given.
In January 2006, an Iranian military plane crashed in the northwest of the country, killing all 13 people aboard including a top military officer.
The plane, a Falcon, came down near Orumiyeh, near the Turkish border; among the dead were Ahmad Kazemi, the commander of the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards, and seven senior officers.
The Falcon crash came barely a month after a decrepit Iranian military transport plane, a Lockheed C-130, crashed into the foot of a high-rise housing block after suffering engine failure. The aircraft was bought from the US before the 1979 revolution.
A total of 108 people were killed, the majority journalists who were assigned to cover a military war game.
In October 2003, an Iranian air force F-4 fighter crashed while on a training flight west of the capital, killing both its crew.
More than 300 people were killed aboard an Iranian troop transport aircraft when it crashed shortly before landing in February 2003, in one of the world’s worst air accidents in the southern Iranian province of Kerman.
The Russian-built Ilyushin plane was carrying 284 elite Revolutionary Guards and 18 crew on a flight from the southeastern town of Zahedan when it came down near the southern city of Kerman.
Iran’s civil and military fleet is made up of ancient aircraft in terrible condition due to their age and lack of maintenance. The Iranian regime is barred by sanctions from buying American Boeing planes or European Airbus craft when they include a significant number of US parts.
Recently, American officials announced that they decided to allow selling spare parts for the aged Iranian civilian fleet.
