IRAN: Rescuers battled winds and snow yesterday as they recovered body parts and searched for clues as to why a military plane slammed into a mountain in Iran, killing all 302 Revolutionary Guards on board.
The death toll from Wednesday's crash, the worst in Iran's history, was the highest in a string of air disasters in Iran involving Russian-made aircraft.
Officials said bad weather may have caused the crash in which 284 passengers, among them scores of high-ranking military officials, and 18 crew died. The pilot said he was battling strong winds before radio contact was lost.
Atrocious weather later forced the rescue teams to abandon their search and as darkness fell on the towering Sirch mountain chain in south-eastern Iran, where the Ilyushin-76 troop carrier crashed, distraught relatives reluctantly drifted away.
"It will take a long time so go home, be patient. We are doing our best and with God's help we'll find the bodies of your relatives," Revolutionary Guards Commander Raufi Nejad told a group of around 20 men waiting on the freezing mountainside.
The soldiers had been returning from border duties near Iran's frontier with Pakistan for 48 hours' leave at home.
Formed shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, the Revolutionary Guards are independent of the regular army and played a key role in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Today it numbers about 120,000 and answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - the head of Iran's Shia Muslim establishment. In a message of condolence to the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Ayatollah Khamenei said: "The tragic event . . . in which a group of my beloved children lost their lives, deeply grieved me." Iran's President Mohammad Khatami called for a thorough investigation of the crash and quick publication of the results.
Rescuers working on the treacherous mountain slopes have so far only recovered a few bags of badly mutilated body parts. The plane's flight data recorder, which could throw light on the the crash, had also not been located by nightfall.
Rescue workers returning from the crash site spoke of finding fist-sized body parts among the burned wreckage. "It was one of the worst scenes I've witnessed. The bodies are just destroyed," said Mohammad, a Red Crescent worker.
Hossein Ali wept as he spoke about his brother, who was on board the ill-fated flight. "I lost one of my brothers in the Iran-Iraq war and this one fought for his country. Our parents don't know anything about the crash," he said.
Earlier yesterday, a large blackened circle surrounded by snow could be seen from about 1.5 kilometres away, marking the spot where the aircraft smashed into the mountainside.
Officials said the aircraft had come within about 100 metres of making it over the summit of the Sirch mountain chain, which rises to over 3,000 metres.
Russia's civil aviation authorities said the aircraft was an Ilyushin-76, a large military transport plane and the workhorse of the country's military since Soviet times. It was the second Ilyushin-76 plane crash this year. A cargo plane crashed in East Timor at the end of January, killing all six Russian crew.
The Iranian plane was on a short flight from Zahedan, close to Iran's border with Pakistan, to the city of Kerman, 1,075 kilometres south-east of Tehran. Most of the victims were from Kerman province.
It crashed 35 kilometres southeast of Kerman into the Sirch mountain chain, which rises abruptly from the plains of the surrounding desert and contains the highest peaks in the region.
Shahab (19), from a nearby village, said he heard the plane smash into the mountain around 5:30 to 6p.m. yesterday.
"We suddenly heard a noise like an explosion and the sky became like daytime. We ran out of the house because we thought it was Iraqi planes," he said.
The crash was the latest in a series of aviation disasters in Iran, most of which involved Russian-designed aircraft.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Western sanctions had forced Iran to supplement its fleet of Boeing and European-made Airbus aircraft with planes bought or leased from the former Soviet Union.
Last December, a Ukrainian Antonov An-140 plane crashed in central Iran, killing all 46 aboard.
Most of the passengers were top Ukrainian and Russian aerospace officials travelling to Iran to test fly an Iranian-built copy of the plane.