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Contact Photographer Mohamad Yaghobi-
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What: An Iranian Caspian Airlines Russian-made Tupolev passenger jet en route from Tehran (Iran) to Yerevan
Where: near Jannatabad village 75 miles northwest of Tehran
When: July 15 2009, crashed 11:30 am, 16 minutes after takeoff
Who: 153 passengers and 15 crew including eight members of Iran’s youth judo team and two trainers. Another report said simply there were “over 150” aboard.
Why: After the pilot complained of technical problems, witnesses reported that the plane caught on fire while still in the air, then smashed up when it hit the ground.
As it flew overhead, burning pieces of the plane were falling to the ground, setting of fires as they hit the ground,
Other sources say that after one engine caught on fire, the pilot attempted a landing in a wheat field. A witness Abul-Fazel Idaji made statements released on the internet explaining that just before the plane hit the ground, “its wheels were out and there was fire coming from the lower parts.” An eighteen year old farmer said “I was driving my tractor when I saw a big fire in the sky.” Another witness said the plane circled as if looking for a place to land, before it crashed. The sound it made is described as being like an earthquake, and some people thought that they had been bombed. The impact with the ground created a 10 meters deep crater. No survivors. Local villagers had carried off parts of the plane. Nothing identifiable remained of the passengers who reportedly were Armenian or Georgian.
Most public statements attempt to blame the crash on US sanctions; however, the TU-154 is a Russian made plane with Russian made components, and a very old, noisy and rickety one, at that, and banned from European airspace.
