Dozens aboard plane injured during emergency landing in Iran

Reporting from Beirut — A Russian-made passenger airplane caught fire during an emergency landing in northeastern Iran this morning, injuring dozens of people aboard in the latest in a string of Iranian civil aviation and transport mishaps.

All 157 passengers and 13 crew members aboard Taban Air Flight 6437 survived as the Tupolev-154 aircraft caught fire on the tarmac of Mashhad International Airport, local media reported. At least 45 people were hospitalized.

Experts say poor maintenance and management as well as international sanctions on Iran over its nuclear research and development program have taken a toll on Iran’s civil aviation sector. Iran has shown no sign of changing course on its nuclear program amid Western accusations that it has spurned a U.N.-backed offer to trade its low-enriched uranium supply for fuel plates needed for a Tehran medical reactor.

Today President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced forthcoming “good news about the production” of its own medical reactor fuel to be announced on the Feb. 11 anniversary of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

“This news is so sweet as to please the entire Iranian nation and all freedom-seeking nations in the world,” state media quoted him as saying.

Images on Iranian news websites showed the fuselage, right wing and tail of the Taban Air plane completely burned and the landing gear mangled. The plane was en route from the southwestern Iranian city of Abadan to Mashhad but stopped for a few hours in the central city of Isfahan because of heavy fog in the northeast.

Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran’s civil aviation organization, said the plane landed amid poor visibility because of bad weather.

“The injured people are mainly shocked and stressed,” he said, adding many of the passengers were returning from pilgrimage to holy sites in Iraq.

It was Iran’s second major transport accident in as many days. On Saturday, a train derailment in northeastern Iran killed eight passengers and injured dozens.

It was also the latest in a long series of air accidents involving Russian-made aircraft. In July an Aria Airlines Tupolev-154 caught fire as it landed in Mashhad, killing 15 passengers and crew. Iran has suffered at least seven fatal air crashes since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, one of the worst civil aviation records in the world.

Western nations have offered to remove sanctions and help Iran improve its air transport sector in exchange for a curbing of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

daragahi@latimes.com