IRAN - Feb. 19 - Air Crash Kills 302 Elite Troops.

A Russian-built Ilyushin-76 aircraft operated by the Revolutionary Guards smashes into a mountainside 35 km south-east of the city of Kerman, killing 284 members of the Sarallah brigade from the Revolutionary Guards and 18 crew members. The plane took off from Zahedan, near the border with Pakistan. About one hour into the flight the pilot told air traffic controllers he wanted to land in Kerman, which is normally 45 minutes flying time from Zahedan. Kerman State Governor Mohammad Ali Karimi told IRNA: "In his last radio contact, the pilot said 'I am trying to approach the airport; maybe the weather conditions will get better'. At that moment, the contact was lost". (This is the country's worst ever air disaster). Ahmad Dabbagh Zadeh, head of the Red Crescent in the Kerman province told IRNA that about 60 people from his office were involved in the search of the crash site. No official explanation or hypothesis has been put forward for the crash. A senior source close to the government told Reuters some high-ranking military officials were among the fatalities in the crash. The government issued a message of condolence to the families of those killed in the crash. (Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran has been forced to supplement its fleet of Boeing and European-made Airbus airliners with planes bought or leased from the former Soviet Union. In Dec. 2002, a Ukrainian Antonov An-140 plane crashed into a mountain in central Iran, killing all 46 aboard. Most of the passengers were top Ukrainian and Russian aerospace officials who were travelling to test fly an Iranian-built copy of the plane. The crash was blamed on pilot error. Earlier in 2002, all 119 people aboard an Iran Air Tours died when a Tupolev-154 aircraft crashed near the western city of Khorramabad).