Iranian Plane Crash Kills 43

An Iranian airliner crashed in the United Arab Emirates today, killing 43 of the 46 people on board.

The Kish Airline plane, a 50-seater Fokker-50, went down in flames as it flew into Sharjah airport from the Iranian island of Kish.

Ghanem al-Hajiri, the director general of civil aviation and the Sharjah airport authority, said the plane crashed at 11.40am local time (0740 GMT), about 3km from the airport.

Officials cited by Reuters blamed a technical fault and said they had retrieved the plane's black box. Iran's aviation authority said in a statement that the plane had asked for an emergency landing as it was coming into Sharjah, then deviated to the left and crashed. Iran is to send a team to the UAE to help investigate the crash.

One witness saw the plane nose-diving into the ground near the airport. "From the impact of the crash, it overturned, split into two and then burst into flames," the witness said.

Local television news showed rescue workers sifting through smoking debris. Witnesses reported seeing bodies laid out beneath blankets at the crash scene, on a road near a wealthy residential district.

Local police listed the victims by nationality as 19 Iranians including the six crew members, 12 Indians, four Egyptians, two Filipinos, two Algerians, a Syrian, a Chinese, a Nigerian and a Bangladeshi.

The three survivors were being treated at al-Qasimi hospital in Sharjah. At least two were said to be in critical condition.

Distraught relatives of those on board were meanwhile waiting inside the airport for information about their loved ones.

Abdel Rasoul al-Majidi said that his 65-year-old father-in-law was supposed to be arriving on the flight. "We don't know what's going on. All we know is that my father-in-law was arriving today and then we heard of this plane crash," he said.

An Kish Airline official confirmed that one of the company's planes had been involved in an accident, but he had no further details.

The airline runs domestic and some short-haul international routes to and from Iran's Kish Island in the Gulf. The UAE-Kish route is popular with immigrant workers in the UAE who need to renew residence papers and work permits.

Iran has a history of air accidents, which are often blamed on badly maintained planes. In June, an Iranian military C-130 transport plane crashed outside Tehran, killing all seven people on board. In February, a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 crashed in south-east Iran, killing the 275 on board.

In September, a Tupolev-154 belonging to Kish Air went off course while making its landing approach at the Minsk-2 airport in Belarus, striking trees and sustaining serious wing damage. None of the 40 people aboard were hurt.

Tehran has blamed many of its air crashes on US sanctions, saying that they have prevented the country from repairing and replacing its ageing fleet.