Local officials fear 65 dead in plane crash in central Iran
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An Aseman Airlines flight carrying 65 passengers from Tehran to Yasuj crashed some 475 kilometers south of the capital on Sunday morning. Officials have said it is likely all have died, but the site is not easily accessible in the rugged Zagros mountains.
"The plane crashed near the city of Semirom in Isfahan Province," Iran's Head of Emergency Medical Services Pir-Hosseein Kolivand told state-run IRNA news agency.
Semirom is 470 kilometers south of Tehran.
The plane crashed near the village of Shahrokh Kanari.
Boyer Ahmed, the village's leader, said: "it is likely that all the plane's passengers have died."
Emergency workers were trying to reach the area by land because rescue helicopters were unable to land due to heavy fog, Semirom’s governor told the semi-official Mehr news agency.
State-run PressTV reported 66 people were on board the plane, which disappeared from radar 50 minutes after taking off from Tehran’s Mehrabad airport.
The airline has retracted a statement saying definitively that all aboard were dead. It then later stated that 65 people were aboard the flight and one person had missed the flight.
Aseman has Airbus, Boeing, Fokker, and ATR planes in its fleet. Iran has an aging commercial planes due to economic sanctions.
This is a developing story... Last updated at 10:15 a.m., February 19