An Iranian Plane Has Crashed And All 66 People On Board Died

Get the Full StoryA Aseman Airlines' plane takes off with an Iran Air aircraft in the foreground at Tehran airport.

Morteza Nikoubazl Reuters

A passenger plane carrying at least 66 passengers and crew members crashed in the mountains in central Iran on Sunday and people on board died, the airplane company told state press.The plane, a 20-year-old ATR-72 flown by Iran's Aseman Airlines, left Tehran at around 5 a.m. local time and was en route to Yasuj when it disappeared from radar.

The passengers included one child, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency, which printed a list of the names of those believed to be onboard at the time of the crash. The six crew included two security guards, two flight attendants and the pilot and co-pilot, the BBC reported.“An ATR aircraft of Aseman Airlines with 60 passengers and about six crew disappeared from radar this morning,” Aladin Borujerdi, head of parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, told ISNA news agency.The plan crashed in a remote location that is a part of the Zagros mountains, near the Isfahan province border, and near the city of Semirom, according to NBC's Iran correspondent.A search and rescue operation was sent out to scour the crash site near Dena Mountain, a mountain range within the Zagros mountains.“It is not possible to send ambulances to the mountainous area, but choppers are being deployed,” Mojtaba Khaledi, a person for Iran’s emergency organization, told ISNA.The airplane is generally used for short-haul flights, and the airline is known for servicing remote provinces in Iran. Many of Iran's passenger planes are outdated after years of international sanctions, Al Jazeera noted.

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