Iranian passenger plane crash-lands in Southwest

An Iranian passenger plane carrying 142 people crash-landed at an airport in southwestern Khuzestan province, with all aboard unharmed, the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran said.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 careered off the runway and onto a nearby road shortly after landing at Mahshahr airport, agency spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh said. Investigators from the civil aviation organization were at the scene to establish the cause of the incident, and findings will be announced once the investigation is completed, Jafarzadeh said.

Mobile phone footage published by the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency showed passengers on the Caspian Airlines flight alighting a narrow-body aircraft from an emergency exit above the wing and from the front exit near the cockpit. The aircraft was on its belly and its undercarriage was damaged.

In 2014 the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Caspian Airlines for supporting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards and transporting weapons from Iran to Syria. In July 2009 a Caspian Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 plane flying from Tehran to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, crashed in northern Iran killing all 168 people on board.