Rescue teams battled strong winds and treacherous slopes yesterday to find out why a Russian-made troop carrier slammed into a mountain killing 302 Revolutionary Guards in Iran's worst air disaster.
The death toll from the crash, Wednesday, 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 all people on board, including 18 crew, died. The troops were returning from a mission near Iran's border with Pakistan to spend a long holiday weekend at home when their plane crashed into a mountainside in southeast Iran, they said.
The pilot of the Ilyushin-76 troop carrier complained of high winds shortly before losing radio contact.
Officials said rescue teams were looking for the flight data recorder, which could shed light on the cause of the crash. But they said their efforts had so far been impeded by the poor weather and deep snow.
A large blackened circle surrounded by pure white snow could be seen from a distance marking the spot where the plane went down, close to the summit of the Sirch mountain chain which rises to over 3,000m.
Further down the slope, streams of cars ferried scores of distraught relatives from the nearby city of Kerman to temporary shelters set up by the Revolutionary Guards and Red Crescent.
Groups of four or five sobbing Revolutionary Guards soldiers sat on the ground huddled together, mourning lost comrades.
A senior source close to the government said scores of high-ranking military officials were among those killed.
Formed shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, the Revolutionary Guards force is independent of the regular army and played a key role in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Today it numbers about 120,000 personnel and answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- the head of Iran's Shi'ite Muslim establishment.
Dazed relatives who had rushed to the scene sheltered from the gusting wind and waited for information on the victims.
"I've been here since last night but I'm hoping my brother-in-law was not among them," Reza Mezamadadi said as tears streamed down his face.
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.
Rescue workers said strong winds, fog and deep snow made it virtually impossible to work.
"There is a lot of snow, up to your thigh. Near the mountain peak one can hardly walk due to the thick ice underfoot," said Ali, 19, a Red Crescent volunteer.
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, 1,075km southeast of Tehran. Most of the victims were from Kerman province.
It crashed 35km 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 5:30pm to 6:00pm local time on Wednesday.
"We suddenly heard a noise like an explosion and the sky became like day time. We ran out of the house because we thought it was Iraqi planes," he said.
Kerman state governor Mohammad Ali Karimi told IRNA contact with the plane was lost as the pilot began his landing approach.
"In his last radio contact, the pilot said `I am trying to approach the airport; maybe the weather conditions will get better.' At that moment, the contact was lost," Karimi said.
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