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Iran plane crashes into building, 116 dead
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-07 06:52
"I was supposed to be on the plane as well so I don't know whether to be
happy or sad," said a journalist from the ISNA students news agency who declined
to be identified.
Smoke and flames
rise from a building where a plane crashed in Tehran December 6, 2005. An
Iranian military plane carrying at least 94 people crashed in flames into
a Tehran apartment block on Tuesday, killing all those on board, police
said. [Reuters] | He said a colleague had called
him from inside the plane before take off. "He said that the pilot didn't want
to fly because there was a technical problem with the plane."
State television showed footage of some of its employees killed in the crash
accompanied by mournful music.
SMOULDERING WRECKAGE
An Interior Ministry spokesman said some of those killed on the ground had
been in their cars, whose burned-out shells littered the crash site.
The front of the plane was destroyed on impact. A propeller and ripped wing
smoldered in front of the blackened building. Flames licked out of the windows
of the apartments and thick black smoke billowed into the sky.
"Some people were throwing themselves out of windows to escape the flames. I
saw two die like that," a policeman said.
Passerby Hassan Hedayati, his face covered in dust and hands caked with dried
blood, was among the first on the scene.
"I pulled 30 bodies out of the plane. They were all charred," he said.
The apartment block, which was still standing, is in the Shahrak-e Towhid
neighborhood, a residential area reserved for military families. It lies on the
flightpath to the airport.
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