Reports say plane crash in Iran kills 46 people

TEHRAN, Iran -- A passenger plane crashed in central Iran on Monday during a flight from Turkey, killing 46 people, mostly from Ukraine, according to television reports.

State-run Iran television said the plane crashed near the village of Baqerabad while attempting to make a scheduled landing close to its destination -- the central Iranian city of Isfahan, some 250 miles south of Tehran.

Iranian officials did not comment on the passengers' fate, but Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera quoted sources in Tehran as saying all on board were killed.

Mykola Melnikov, a duty officer at the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry, said preliminary information showed the plane appeared to be an Antonov-140 that took off from Kharkiv, Ukraine Monday with a delegation from the Kharkiv aircraft plant. The plant built the plane in which they were flying.

Lost contact

An unidentified Iranian aircraft manufacturing official told Iran television that the plane lost contact with Isfahan airport's control tower minutes before

Iranian TV said the scientists were traveling to Iran to attend a Wednesday test flight of the joint Iranian-Ukrainian manufactured passenger plane, being built in Isfahan.

The station said the plane was carrying aerospace experts from Ukraine and Russia. It was not immediately clear why the plane crashed.

Iranian civil authorities said the plane had made a stop in Turkey, according to Al-Jazeera.

On Feb. 12, 119 passengers and crew died aboard Iranian Airlines Flight 956 when it slammed into a snow-covered mountain near the city of Khorramabad, about 230 miles southwest of the Iranian capital of Tehran.