-Caveat Lector- Plane Crash Kills 302 Iranian Soldiers
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran - A military plane carrying 302 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran on Wednesday, killing all on board in the country's worst plane crash ever, state-run media reported. The plane was en route from Zahedan, on the Pakistani border, to Kerman, about 500 miles southeast of Tehran, state-run Tehran television reported. It crashed about 20 miles from its destination. The Russian-made aircraft operated by the Iranian military lost contact with the control tower at about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday as it prepared to land at the Kerman airport, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Air traffic controllers at Kerman said the pilot had radioed about bad weather and strong winds before losing contact, state-run Tehran television reported. There was heavy snowfall in many parts of Iran on Tuesday and Wednesday, including Zahedan, which hadn't seen snow in three years. Search teams early Thursday found part of the debris, including the plane's wing, near a tunnel that cuts through local mountains, the news agency reported. The possibility of terrorism was not raised by any of the media reporting the crash. The plane was reported to be either an Antonov or Ilyushin airliner, both Russian-made. The news agency said rescuers at the crash site had confirmed all 302 people on board were killed. All aboard — 18 crew and 284 passengers — were members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite fighting force under the direct control of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The guards protect Iran's borders and defend ruling hard-liners in this ultra- conservative society. A senior official in Zahedan told The Associated Press that several of the victims were senior officers of the guard. The crash was the latest in a string of plane accidents the Iranian government has blamed on U.S. sanctions, arguing that they have prevented the country from repairing and replacing its aging fleet. Trade between Iran and the United States has been frozen under sanctions Washington imposed after the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Tehran television quoted an anonymous official as saying the forces had visited the impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province, of which Zahedan is the capital, for an "important mission." The government issued a statement offering condolences to the families of the victims, television and radio reports said. Iranians were preparing for an Islamic holiday on Thursday, the feast of Velayat, when Shiites believe Islam's prophet Mohammad appointed his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor. Wednesday's crash was the deadliest in Iranian history with the toll surpassing the 290 killed on July 3, 1988, when an Iran Air A300 Airbus was shot down over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes. The U.S. military said it misidentified the plane as an Iranian fighter, an account disputed by Iran. In December, Transportation Minister Ahmad Khorram acknowledged that Iran's air industry was suffering from U.S. sanctions on purchase of American-made planes and warned of air disasters if the trade ban wasn't lifted. The minister, speaking days after the Dec. 23 crash of a Ukrainian An-140 plane that killed 46 scientists, said several of Iran's aging Boeing and Airbus planes have been grounded because of technical problems and lack of spare parts. He said Iran's fleet was more than two decades old and has "reached a crisis point." Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has supplemented its fleet of Boeing and European- made Airbus airliners with planes bought or leased from the former Soviet Union. In February 2002, a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 airliner carrying 119 people smashed into snow-covered mountains not far from its destination of Khorramabad, 230 miles southwest of Tehran. In May 2001, 30 people — including the then transportation minister — died when a Russian- made YAK-40 crashed in bad weather. "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." -GW Bush during a photo-op with Congressional leaders on 12/18/2000. As broadcast on CNN and available in transcript on their website http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html Steve Wingate, Webmaster ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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