The plane crash has killed 72 people and injured 33, Fars news agency reported, quoting the coroner´s office of West Azerbaijan province where the plane came down. There were conflicting reports of the number of people on board, with other reports quoting the number as 105.
The pilots of the Boeing-727, operated by Iran´s national airline, attempted the emergency landing in the city of Orumiyeh after reporting a technical failure to the control tower, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported, quoting a deputy provincial governor, Ebrahim Fatholahi.
The nature of the technical failure was unclear. A spokesman for the Iranian civil aviation organisation, Abbas Mosayebi, said only that the plane ´faced an incident,´ state TV reported.
The network also said the aircraft disappeared from radar and went down in farmland after making a second attempt to land. There was no word on what might have caused the crash. The aircraft was headed from Teheran to Orumiyeh, capital of West Azerbaijan province, a distance of about 700km.
State TV aired footage showing rescue workers and local farmers searching for survivors on Sunday night in parts of the wrecked plane under snowfall and in the darkness. Some of the passengers were only lightly wounded and able to walk off the plane and some had to be hospitalised, Mosayebi said.
MAJOR AIR CRASHES
The following are major air accidents that took place in recent years, according to Xinhua:
On Nov. 4, a plane carrying 68 people crashed in central Cuba on Nov. 4, killing all onboard. The ATR-72 turboprop plane of the state-run Aero Caribbean airline crashed near the village of Guasimal, 355 km east of Havana, in the central Sancti Spiritus province.
On Aug. 24, 2010, an ERJ-190 jet crashed near the runaway of Lindu airport of Yichun, some 40 minutes after it took off from Harbin, capital of China´s northeastern Heilongjiang province. Forty-two people were killed.
On July 28, 2010, an Airblue Flight ED-202 crashed into the Margalla Hills in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, killing all the 152 people aboard.
On May 22, 2010, at least 158 people were killed when an Air India Express plane from Dubai overshot the runway during landing and crashed near Mangalore airport in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
On May 12, 2010, a passenger plane of Libya´s Afriqiyah Airways crashed on landing at Tripoli airport, killing all of the 103 people on board except an 8-year-old Dutch boy.
On April 10, 2010, 96 people aboard Polish President Lech Kaczynski´s official Tupolev Tu-154 plane were killed in a crash near Smolensk airport in western Russia. The plane was carrying Kaczynski, his wife Maria and a large number of senior Polish officials.
On Jan. 25, 2010, an Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 90 people fell into the Mediterranean sea shortly after taking off from Lebanon´s capital Beirut, killing all the people on board.
On July 15, 2009, an Iranian passenger plane crashed near the country´s northwestern city of Gazvin, killing all 168 people on board.
On June 30, 2009, an Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean as it approached the airport on the Comoros Islands, killing 152 people on board. Only a 13-year-old French girl survived.
On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, went down over the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris, killing all 228 people on board.
On May 20, 2009, an Indonesian Air Force Hercules C-130 crashed and burned in Magetan, East Java, killing at least 96 people and injuring 15 others.
On Feb. 12, 2009, U.S. Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed in suburban Buffalo in northern New York state, killing all 49 aboard and one on the ground.
On Sept. 14, 2008, an Aeroflot Boeing 737 plane crashed in a ball of fire near the Ural mountains, killing all 82 passengers and six crew members.
On Aug. 24, 2008, a Boeing 737-200 owned by Itek Air crashed shortly after takeoff from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, killing 65 people and injuring 22 others.
On Aug. 20, 2008, 154 people died and 18 others were injured when a 15-year-old plane crashed and burst into flames during takeoff in Madrid.
On April 15, 2008, a passenger plane crashed into a market in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing more than 50 people.
On Feb. 21, 2008, a passenger plane belonging to small Venezuelan airline company Santa Barbara crashed in the Andes just after taking off. All 46 people on board were killed.
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