A Ukrainian passenger plane carrying at least 170 people has crashed due to technical problems shortly after taking off from Iran, killing all on board.
The Boeing 737 belonging to Ukraine International Airlines came down near Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport and burst into flames.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed on Wednesday morning that all passengers and crew on board had been killed, citing preliminary information.
Associated Press journalists who reached the crash site saw a wide field of debris scattered across farmland. The dead lay among shattered pieces of the aircraft.
Rescuers in masks shouted over the noise of hovering helicopters as they worked.
“The fire is so heavy that we cannot (do) any rescue... we have 22 ambulances, four bus ambulances and a helicopter at the site,” Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran’s emergency services, told Iranian state television.
Reuters reports that Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, told state television that the number of passengers on board the flight was 170.
According to air tracking service FlightRadar24, the plane that crashed was Flight PS 752 and was flying to Kiev. The plane was three years old and was a Boeing 737-NG, it said.
Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the company was aware of media reports of a plane crash in Iran and was gathering more information.
There has been no official word from Ukraine International Airlines.
The Boeing 737-800 is a very common single-aisle, twin-engine jetliner used for short to medium-range flights. Thousands of the planes are used by airlines around the world, PA Media reports.
Introduced in the late 1990s, it is an older model than the Boeing 737 MAX, which has been grounded for nearly 10 months following two deadly crashes.
The crash came hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting two bases in Iraq housing US forces in retaliation for the killing of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani.