128 killed as plane hits apartments

AT LEAST 128 people were killed when a military transport plane clipped the top of a 10-storey apartment building in Tehran and crashed, gouging out a huge crater and igniting a major fire.

All 94 people on the plane were killed, most of them Iranian radio and television journalists heading to cover military manoeuvres in the south. Thirty-four residents of the apartment building also died, and 90 were injured, Tehran state radio said.

Flames leapt out of windows, and from the roof and several other floors of the building as panicked residents fled the Towhid complex, a series of high-rise apartment buildings for air force personnel in the Azadi suburb of Tehran.