Plane crash in Tehran kills 39 after engine fails

A regional passenger plane has crashed while taking off from the Iranian capital Tehran, killing 39 people and leaving another nine injured.

Ahmad Majidi, the deputy transport minister, provided the latest casualty figures in an appearance on state TV. The channel earlier reported that all 48 people on board had died.

The aircraft, an IrAn-140 typically used for short domestic flights, crashed near Tehran’s Mehrabad airport. The plane went down in a residential area after one of its engines failed, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported.