At least 70 killed in Iranian passenger plane crash.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - At least 70 people were killed
and 35 injured when an Iranian Boeing 727
passenger plane crashed in bad weather in
northwestern Iran on Sunday, the head of the
Iranian Red Crescent said.
Mahmoud Mozafar told Reuters that many of the
injured were in a bad condition. He said 106
people, 12 crew members and 94 passengers,
were on board the Iran Air plane when it
crashed.
Another Red Crescent official, Heidar Heidari, told
the state news agency IRNA, that the "death toll
is expected to increase."
Earlier, Iranian media gave different accounts of
the number of people on board the plane, which
some officials said crashed just before landing at
the airport in the city of Urumiyeh.
One official said 50 people were rescued and that
rescue operations were being hampered by
snow and fog in the area.
Mozafar told state television "the plane was
smashed into pieces but did not explode."
Shahrokh Nioushabadi, a spokesman for Iran's
national airline, Iran Air, told the semi-official
Mehr news agency that two children were
among the passengers.
State television said the Iran Air plane was en
route from the capital Tehran to Urumiyeh.
Iran has suffered a string of crashes in the past
few decades. U.S. sanctions against Iran have
prevented it from buying new aircraft or spare
parts from the West.
The last major air crash in Iran was in July 2009
when a Caspian Airlines Tupolev aircraft bound
for Armenia caught fire in mid-air and crashed
into farmland near the city of Qazvin, killing all
168 people on board.
One of the country's worst air accidents
happened in February 2003 when an Iranian
Ilyushin-76 troop carrier crashed in southeast
Iran, killing all 276 Revolutionary Guard soldiers
and crew aboard.

Source: http://us.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7082DM20110109?ca=rdt