Iran crash death toll rises to 128

A military transport plane loaded with Iranian journalists and trying to make an emergency landing slammed into a 10-storey apartment building, ripping open the top of the structure and igniting a huge fire. At least 128 people were killed.

All 94 people on the plane were killed, most of them Iranian 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 leaped out of windows, 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.

Wreckage rained down, hitting a nearby fuel station, police said. Cars parked below were smashed by falling debris.

At the foot of the blackened building, what appeared to be a pile of wreckage was in flames.

Firefighters managed to put out the fire in the building, which was damaged and charred but still standing.

Police cordoned the building and debris field, preventing journalists and a crowd of as many as 10,000 people from getting close to the site. Many in the crowd were screaming, afraid their relatives had been killed. Several hours after the crash, the building still was smouldering.

“It was like an earthquake,” said Reza Sadeqi, a 25-year-old merchant, who saw the plane hit the building. “The force of the crash threw me about inside my shop.”

“I felt the heat of the fire caused by the crash. It was like being in hell,” he said.

The C-130 aircraft had just taken off from the nearby Mehrabad airport en route to Bandar Abbas, a port city in southern Iran. It experienced a technical problem and was returning the Mehrabad for an emergency landing when it hit the building, state-run television said.

The plane, which belonged to the army air force, carried 84 passengers and 10 crew members, Iranian television reported. All aboard were killed, the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told The Associated Press.

Witness Iraj Mordi said he saw the plane as it appeared to circle the Mehrabad Airport before seeing its tail suddenly burst into flames, leaving a smoke trail in the sky as it plummeted.

Mordin said he thought the plane was going to crash into a fuel station and fled, but turned and saw it slam into what he thought was the building’s eighth floor.

In April, an Iranian military Boeing 707 with 157 people aboard skidded off a runway at Tehran airport and caught fire, killing three people. Last year, a Ukrainian-built aircraft carrying aerospace scientists crashed in central Iran, killing all 44 people aboard.

In 2003, a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of south-eastern Iran, killing 302 people. In 1988, an Iran Air A300 Airbus was shot down by USS Vincennes over the Persian Gulf, killing 290.