Updated on
Summary
Two black box recorders have been recovered from a Tupolev aircraft that crashed in Iran and left 168 people dead, reports have said. Fan blades of an engine from the Tupolev Tu-154 passenger planePress TV, Irans state English-language television station, said the cause of the crash was still unknown. The Caspian Airlines aircraft was on its way to Armenias capital Yerevan from Tehran when it came down 16 minutes after take-off, near the city of Qazvin. News reports said the plane carried 153 passengers and 15 crew. Witnesses said its tail was on fire before it went down. I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake, said Ali Akbar Hashemi, 23, an eyewitness to the plan crash. Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts said. US sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Irans large ethnic Armenian community, as well as 11 members of Irans national youth judo team. Five Armenian citizens were killed too, Armenias Foreign Ministry said in a statement, along with two Georgians. The crash is Irans worst since February 2003, when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of south eastern Iran, killing 302 people aboard.
