Russian built passenger plane crash lands in Iran

A Russian-made Iranian passenger plane carrying 157 passengers and 13 crew crash landed in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, on Sunday, injuring at least 46 people, state television reported.
The broadcast quoted Iran's civil aviation spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, as saying that no one was killed in the accident.
He gave no indication of what might have caused the accident.
The Taban Air plane caught fire upon landing at Mashhad airport at 7:20 a.m. local time (0350 GMT). The injured have been taken to hospitals in Mashhad, the report added.
Jafarzadeh said the Tupolev plane initially took off from Abadan airport in southwestern Iran on Saturday evening but landed in Isfahan, central Iran, because of bad weather in Mashhad, its destination, before taking off again early on Sunday morning for Mashhad.
Jafarzadeh said the incident in Mashhad happened whilst the pilot made an emergency landing because a passenger was ill.
Television pictures showed the stricken smouldering plane, with pieces of wreckage nearby.
State television reported that part of the aircraft had burned and the left wing and undercarriage were torn off.
Iran has about a dozen Soviet-built Tupolev airliners, and has seen numerous crashes in recent years because its airlines have been plagued by maintenance problems, partly because they are chronically cash-strapped and cannot buy new planes.
Iranian officials often blame US sanctions that prevent it from refurbishing the American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and also make it difficult to get spare parts or planes from Europe.
The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the fall of the Soviet Union.