Search for bodies of Iran’s elite troops killed in air crash

SEARCH teams pressed through fog, rain and strong wind yesterday to recover some mutilated bodies from the mountainous site of a military plane crash that killed 302 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, the state news agency reported.

In the country's worst plane crash, the Russian-made Ilyushin crashed into a mountain on Wednesday evening amid bad weather en route from Zahedan, on the Pakistani border, to Kerman, about 500 miles southeast of Tehran.

All aboard 18 crew members and 284 passengers were members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite group under the direct control of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.