An Iranian airliner caught fire after a tyre burst on landing at a northeastern airport today, killing at least 30 of the 148 people aboard, state television said.
The death toll was sharply reduced from the 80 dead first reported by state television. It said 62 people emerged unhurt from the wrecked plane at the airport in the city of Mashhad, site of Iran's holiest shrine. Another 47 were taken hospital and the fate of the remainder was unclear.
A civil aviation official, Reza Jafarzadeh, told the official IRNA news agency that 97 people had survived.
The official denied reports of an emergency landing, but gave no alternative explanation for how the accident happened. The plane had flown from the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.
"Because some of the injured have been transferred to hospitals, we have no exact figures about the death toll," the managing director of Iranairtour, Mehdi Sadeqi, had previously told state television.
Television pictures showed a broken-up plane with parts of its fuselage charred. The cockpit appeared to be largely unaffected by the fire, as did much of the rear portion of the aircraft.
Firefighters were shown extinguishing fires in parts of the smouldering wreck and clambering over other areas of the fuselage, carrying out corpses covered in blankets.
State media had reported that the plane, a Russian-built Tupolev 154, caught fire at 1.45 p.m. (1015 GMT) after slipping off the side of the runway when a tyre burst on landing.
"The flight crew and the pilot of this flight survived, and this will be a great help to find out the cause of the accident as soon as possible," Roads and Transport Minister Mohammad Rahmati told Iran's students news agency ISNA.
An Iranairtour official, who asked not to be identified, said the airline was contacting families of the victims. He also said flights to Mashhad had been cancelled after the crash.