80 reportedly killed in Iranian plane fire

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80 reportedly killed in Iranian plane fire

By Alireza Ronaghi 32 minutes ago

An Iranian passenger plane caught fire after its tire burst on landing at an airport in Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad on Friday, killing at least 80 people, state television and officials said.

State television said 147 people were on board the flight to Mashhad, home to Iran's holiest shrine, from the southern port city of Bandar Abbas. It put the death toll at 80, all of them passengers. Television said all the crew survived.

A civil aviation official, Reza Jafarzadeh, told Reuters 148 people were on the state-owned Iranairtour plane, flight number 945, but he did not give a death toll. He said investigation teams were at the scene.

Television pictures showed a broken-up plane lying on the side of the runway with parts of its fuselage charred. The cockpit appeared to be largely unaffected by the fire, as did much of the rear portion of the plane. Firefighters were shown extinguishing fires in parts of the smoldering wreck and clambering over other areas of the fuselage, carrying out corpses covered in blankets.

An Iranairtour official confirmed the incident involved one of its planes but gave no details

The plane, a Russian-built Tupolev 154, caught fire at 1.45 p.m. (1015 GMT) after slipping off the side of the runway when a tire burst on landing, state media reported.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060901/ts_nm/iran_plane1_d...