Iran finds wreckage of crashed plane

The Iranian military have located the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed with 65 people on board, the Revolutionary Guards told state television on Tuesday, two days after the plane disappeared from radar in mountainous central Iran.

The Aseman Airlines flight from Tehran crashed on Sunday 50 minutes into its journey to the southwestern city of Yasuj.

No one is expected to have survived.

Iran has suffered several plane crashes in the past few decades.

Tehran says U.S. sanctions have long prevented it from buying new aircraft or spare parts from the West.

Officials said the crashed ATR was 25 years old.

A deal with world powers on Iran’s nuclear program has lifted some of those sanctions, opening the way for Iranian airlines to update their creaking fleets.

Aseman signed a deal in 2017 to buy at least 30 Boeing 737 MAX jets. National carrier IranAir has ordered 80 planes from Boeing and 100 from Airbus.

Based in the southern French city of Toulouse, ATR is a joint venture between Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo

Earlier air disasters include the crash of a Boeing 727 passenger plane in 2011 which killed 78 people in the northwest of Iran, and the 2009 crash of a Caspian Airlines Tupolev aircraft bound for Armenia which killed all 168 people on board.

One of Iran’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. (Reuters/NAN)