http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6012517%255E2,00.html
Elite troops perish in Iran plane crash
From correspondents in Tehran
February 20, 2003
AN Iranian troop transport aircraft crashed near the central city of Kerman this morning, killing 302 people, the official IRNA news agency reported.
It was not immediately clear if all the dead were on the plane, which crashed as it was preparing to land on a flight from the southeastern town of Zahedan.
Earlier state radio had cited a military commander as saying that 280 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps had been aboard the Ilyushin transport, when it went down on the outskirts of the village of Balbuyeh, some 80kms from Kerman.
"Air traffic controllers at Kerman airport said the pilot had radioed bad weather, including strong winds, before losing contact," IRNA said.
The victims all served in the Guards' Imam Ali battalion in Sistan-Baluchistan, a border province notorious for drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan, of which Zahedan is the capital.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft at around 5.30pm (1am AEDT), state radio and television said.
Agence France-Presse
Elite troops perish in Iran plane crash
From correspondents in Tehran
February 20, 2003
AN Iranian troop transport aircraft crashed near the central city of Kerman this morning, killing 302 people, the official IRNA news agency reported.
It was not immediately clear if all the dead were on the plane, which crashed as it was preparing to land on a flight from the southeastern town of Zahedan.
Earlier state radio had cited a military commander as saying that 280 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps had been aboard the Ilyushin transport, when it went down on the outskirts of the village of Balbuyeh, some 80kms from Kerman.
"Air traffic controllers at Kerman airport said the pilot had radioed bad weather, including strong winds, before losing contact," IRNA said.
The victims all served in the Guards' Imam Ali battalion in Sistan-Baluchistan, a border province notorious for drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan, of which Zahedan is the capital.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft at around 5.30pm (1am AEDT), state radio and television said.
Agence France-Presse