AP Newswire:
Plane crash-lands at Tehran airport, killing one
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - An airliner carrying 157 passengers
skidded off a runway into a river at Tehran's Mehrabad
airport on Wednesday, killing a child, state-run television
reported. Several passengers were reported injured.
Television reports said the landing gear of the Saha
Airlines Boeing 707 failed to open and the plane caught
fire after making a hard landing, its nose and wing
slamming into the runway.
State TV quoted the airline's managing director,
identified only by his last name Nikokar, saying a child
was killed. A woman passenger told the broadcaster that her
son was missing.
«Only one person has been killed and a number of
passengers have been injured,» television quoted Nikokar
as saying.
Initially, government television said 50 people were
killed, then changed its report to say scores were dead. It
later retracted both claims and said only that passengers
were confirmed injured.
TV said part of the plane's fuselage plunged into a river
but passengers were able to jump out of the craft.
The injured, many of whom suffered broken bones, have been
taken to Tehran hospitals for treatment, the television
said.
The plane, carrying 157 passengers, eight of them
children, had just arrived from the tourist island of Kish
in the Persian Gulf at 10:15 p.m. (1745 GMT).
Saha Airline Services is owned by the Iranian military but
also operates civilian flights. It was not immediately
known whether military personnel were on board.
In 2003, Iran suffered its worst-ever air disaster when a
Russian-made Ilyushin military plane crashed in a
mountainous area killing 302 Iranian soldiers. The plane
was on route from to Kerman, about 500 miles southeast of
Tehran.
The toll in the 2003 crash surpassed the 290 killed on
July 3, 1988, when an Iran Air A300 Airbus was shot down
over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes. The U.S.
military said it misidentified the plane as an Iranian
fighter, an account disputed by Iran.