No survivors in Turkish private plane crash: media

pulse

March 12, 2018 7:46 AM

Turkish and Iranian officials said there were eight passengers and three crew aboard the plane, which crashed in the Zagros Mountains on Sunday evening during a flight from Sharjah to Istanbul.

All 11 people on board a private Turkish plane that crashed in southwestern Iran died in the incident, Iranian state media reported Monday.

Turkish media reports said the eight passengers were Mina Basaran, the daughter of a leading Turkish businessman, and seven of her friends who had spent the past days in the United Arab Emirates to celebrate her marriage.

The crew, including the two pilots, were also all female, the reports said.

There was no immediate indication as to the cause of the crash.

Iran's state news agency IRNA said rescuers at the site had found 10 bodies, which were to be taken by helicopter to the Shahr-e Kord airport, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Tehran.

Rescue workers are continuing to search for the eleventh body, it said, adding that all the corpses so far found had been identified except for two, which were heavily burnt.

The aircraft's black boxes were found and will be handed to Turkish authorities, IRNA said, citing Jafar Madani, deputy governor of the province where the plane crashed.

The crash comes less than a month after a twin-engine passenger plane of Iran's Aseman Airlines crashed in the Zagros range, killing all 66 people on board.

The plane had disappeared off the radar after taking off from Tehran on a domestic flight as a snowstorm battered the mountains.

pulse