Military cargo plane crashes in Iran, 15 killed

[January 14, 2019]  By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Boeing 707 military cargo plane crashed in bad weather on Monday west of the Iranian capital, killing 15 out of the 16 people on board, the Iranian army said.

A flight engineer survived and was taken to hospital, the army said in a statement carried by the semi-official Fars news agency. The aircraft's black box - a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) - had been recovered at the crash site, Fars said.

The plane went down near Fath airport, which belongs to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and is located near Karaj in the central Iranian province of Alborz.

"A Boeing cargo 707 place carrying meat from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan had an emergency landing at Fath airport today ... the flight engineer has been dispatched to the hospital," the army said in the statement.

"It exited the runway during the landing and caught fire after hitting the wall at the end of the runway," it said.

An army spokesman, Shahin Taghikhani, told state TV that the plane belonged to Iran and that all on board were Iranian citizens. The army's statement came after conflicting reports over who owned the plane.

Wreckage is seen of a Boeing 707 military cargo plane which crashed on the west of the Iranian capital, near Fath airport, near Karaj, Iran, January 14, 2019. Abbas Shariati/Tasnim News Agency via REUTERS

State TV said rescue teams had been sent to the area, between the airports of Fath and Payam International Airport, where the plane had been meant to land.

(Additional reporting by Ozhas Auyezov in Almaty; Writing and reprting by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.