Aseman Airlines plane crash kills 66 in central Iran
February 18, 2018 04:09 pm
An Iranian passenger plane with 66 people on board has crashed in central Iran during a flight from Tehran to the city of Yasuj, according to Iranian news media reports.
A spokesperson for Iran Aseman Airlines told state TV that the air crash killed all 66 people on board.
The plane went down in a mountainous area near the town of Semirom, the news agency ISNA quoted Mojtaba Khaledi, emergency services spokesperson, as saying.
The Iranian Red Crescent said it had deployed to the area, which was quite foggy at the time of the crash.
State-run PressTV said the Iran Aseman Airlines flight was carrying 60 passengers and six crew members.
Aseman Airlines is a semi-private air carrier headquartered in Tehran that specialises in flights to remote airfields across the country and also flies internationally.
The ATR-72, a twin-engine turboprop, is used for short-distance regional flying.
Authorities said they would be investigating the crash.
Under decades of international sanctions, Iran’s commercial passenger aircraft fleet has aged, with air accidents occurring regularly in recent years.
