Passenger plane crashes into fog-smothered mountain in Iran, killing all 65 people on board
Reports identified the plane as an ATR-72. It said the plane was flying from Tehran to the southern Iranian city of Yasuj
An Iranian commercial plane crashed on Sunday in a foggy, mountainous region of southern Iran, killing all 65 people on board, state media reported. Officials reduced the earlier toll by one as someone missed the flight.
An Aseman Airlines ATR-72, a twin-engined turboprop used for short-distance regional flying, went down near its destination of the southern Iranian city of Yasuj, some 780km (485 miles) south of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Aseman Airlines spokesman Mohammad Taghi Tabatabai told state television that all on flight EP3704 were killed.
“After searching the area, we learned that unfortunately … our dear passengers had lost their lives,” Tabatabai said.
Due to foggy condition, rescue helicopters could not reach the crash site in the Zagros Mountains, state television said. Tabatabai said the plane crashed into Mount Dena, which is about 4,400 metres (14,435 feet) tall.
Aseman Airlines, owned by Iran’s civil service pension foundation, is a semi-private air carrier based in Tehran that specialises in flights to remote airfields across the country. It also flies internationally. It is Iran’s third-largest airline by fleet size, behind state carrier Iran Air and Mahan Air. However, Aseman Airlines is banned from flying in the European Union because of safety concerns.