Jet Carrying Iran Officials Goes Down

A plane carrying Iran’s transportation minister and at least 28 other people, including deputy ministers and members of parliament, crashed Thursday in heavy rain, the official Iranian news agency said.

There were diverging reports on the crash and no confirmation of earlier media statements that all on board had been killed. The head of the Civil Aviation Organization said 32 people were on the Russian-built Yak-40 jet.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the Interior Ministry as saying the wreckage had been found in northeastern Iran. But a state committee probing the accident said the aircraft might have gone down in the north of the country and urged residents there to provide any information that might help in the search.

The plane, operated by Iran’s Qeshm Air, disappeared in a mountainous area near the northern town of Sari on an early-morning flight to the town of Gorgan, about 40 miles from the border with Turkmenistan.

Transportation Minister Rahman Dadman and his team, which included two deputy transportation ministers and seven parliamentary deputies, were on their way to Gorgan to inaugurate the new airport there, IRNA said.

An hour after the plane took off from Tehran, the pilot contacted air traffic controllers reporting bad weather and said he might return to the capital or make an emergency landing in Sari.

Villagers in northeastern Iran said they had spotted a plane flying at low altitude near the town of Shahrud on the other side of a mountain range from Sari.

A team of officials from Armenia’s aviation agency arrived in Tehran on Thursday, IRNA said, adding that the pilot, co-pilot and three of the crew were Armenian nationals.

Iran, which is under U.S. sanctions, operates an aging fleet of aircraft mostly dating from before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Many planes are leased from former Soviet republics to make up for the shortage.