153 killed as plane with Armenian tourists crashes in Iran

The Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan when it crashed on Wednesday near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 120 kilometers northwest of Tehran, state television reported.

The plane was carrying mostly Armenian citizens heading home, News Armenia said.

Some of the passengers were from Georgia.

The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage in flames. "It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said. He did not give a number, but state TV said 153 were on the flight.

Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993.