Iran Plane Crash Leaves 46 Dead

A passenger plane crashed in central Iran on Monday during a flight from Turkey, killing 46 people, mostly from Ukraine, according to television reports.

State-run Iran television said the plane crashed at 7:30 p.m. near the village of Baqerabad while attempting to make a routine landing close to its destination — the central Iranian city of Isfahan, some 250 miles south of Tehran.

Iranian officials did not comment on the passengers' fate, but Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera quoted sources in Tehran as saying all on board were killed.

Iranian TV said the plane was carrying aerospace experts from Ukraine and Russia.

The station said the scientists were traveling to Iran to attend a Wednesday test flight of the joint Iranian-Ukrainian manufactured Iran-140 passenger plane, being built in Isfahan.

Mykola Melnikov, a duty office at the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry, said preliminary information showed the plane appeared to be an An-140 that took off from Kharkiv, Ukraine early afternoon Monday with a delegation of officials from the Kharkiv aircraft plant — which built the plane in which they were flying.

An unidentified Iranian aircraft manufacturing official told Iran television that the plane lost contact with Isfahan airport's control tower minutes before landing. It was not immediately clear why the plane crashed.

Iranian civil authorities said the plane had made a stop in Turkey, according to Al-Jazeera.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi sent messages of condolence to Ukrainian and Russian officials, Iran television reported.

On Feb. 12, 119 passengers and crew died aboard Iranian Airlines Flight 956 when it slammed into a snow-covered mountain near the city of Khorramabad, about 230 miles southwest of the Iranian capital of Tehran.