An Iranian military transport plane crashed into a 10-story apartment building as it was trying to make an emergency landing yesterday, smashing a hole in the top of the building and setting it ablaze. At least 119 people were killed.
All 94 people on the plane were killed, most of them Iranian journalists heading to cover military maneuvers in the south. Twenty five residents of the apartment building also died, and 90 were injured, Tehran state radio said.
A large gash was torn in the top floor of the 10-story building. Flames leaped out of windows from the roof and several other floors as panicked residents fled the Towhid residential complex, a series of high-rise apartment buildings for army personnel in the Azadi suburb of Tehran.
Wreckage rained down, hitting a nearby gas station, police said. Cars parked below were smashed by falling debris.
At the foot of the blackened building, what appeared to be a pile of wreckage was in flames.
Firefighters managed to put out the fire in the building, which was damaged and charred but still standing. Police cordoned off the air, preventing journalists and a crowd of thousands of people from nearing the site. Many in the crowd were screaming, afraid their relatives had been killed.
"It was like an earthquake," said Reza Sadeqi, a 25-year-old merchant, who saw the plane hit the building. "The force of the crash threw me about 3 meters inside my shop."
"I felt the heat of the fire caused by the crash. It was like being in hell," he said.
The C-130 aircraft had just taken off from the nearby Mehrabad airport en route to Bandar Abbas, a port city in southern Iran. It experienced a technical problem and was returning the Mehrabad for an emergency landing when it hit the building, state-run television said.
The plane, which belonged to the army air force, carried 84 passengers and 10 crew members, Iranian television reported. All aboard were killed, the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told reporters.
In April, an Iranian airlines Boeing 707 with 157 people aboard skidded off a runway at Tehran airport and caught fire, killing three people. Last year, a Ukrainian-built aircraft carrying aerospace scientists crashed in central Iran, killing all 44 people aboard.
In 2003, a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people. And in 1988, an Iran Air A300 Airbus was shot down by USS Vincennes over the Persian Gulf, killing 290.
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
‘REGRETTABLE’: TPP lawmaker Vivian Huang said that ‘we will continue to support Chairman Ko and defend his innocence’ as he was transferred to a detention facility The Taipei District Court yesterday ruled that Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) be detained and held incommunicado over alleged corruption dating to his time as mayor of Taipei. The ruling reversed a decision by the court on Monday morning that Ko be released without bail. After prosecutors on Wednesday appealed the Monday decision, the High Court said that Ko had potentially been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Ko did not speak to reporters upon his arrival at the district court at about 9:10am yesterday to attend a procedural
Thirty Taiwanese firms, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), yesterday launched a silicon photonics industry alliance, aiming to accelerate the medium’s development and address the energy efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) devices like data centers. As the world is ushering in a new AI era with tremendous demand for computing power and algorithms, energy consumption is emerging as a critical issue, TSMC vice president of integrated interconnect and packaging business C.K. Hsu (徐國晉) told a media briefing in Taipei. To solve this issue, it is essential to introduce silicon photonics and copackaged optics (CPO)
The High Court yesterday overturned a Taipei District Court decision to release Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and sent the case back to the lower court. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Saturday questioned Ko amid a probe into alleged corruption involving the Core Pacific City development project during his time as Taipei mayor. Core Pacific City, also known as Living Mall (京華城購物中心), was a shopping mall in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) that has since been demolished. On Monday, the Taipei District Court granted a second motion by Ko’s attorney to release him without bail, a decision the prosecutors’ office appealed
RSS