TEHRAN: Iranian rescue teams were forced to suspend their hunt for a missing passenger plane for a second night on Monday as severe weather and hazardous mountain conditions thwarted search efforts.
Aseman Airlines flight EP3704 disappeared on Sunday morning in the Zagros mountains with 66 people on board. Officials said 60 helicopter sorties had flown on Monday to no avail.
“The exact spot of the plane crash was not found, and given the darkness, heavy snowfall and fog in some regions, the aerial search operation was stopped and will be resumed tomorrow,” Esmaeil Najjar, head of Iran’s Crisis Management Organization, told the ISNA news agency.
More than 120 mountaineers are deployed, he said, and “will stay in safe places in the mountainous area before resuming search operations tomorrow.”
The search has been focused on the 14,465-foot Dena mountain, which is popular with Iranians training for climbs in the Himalayas.
The ATR-72 twin-engine plane, in service since 1993, flew early Sunday from Mehrabad airport toward the city of Yasuj, some 500 km to the south.
The plane’s emergency locator transmitter was reportedly not functioning, helping to explain the difficulty in finding the wreckage.
Families of the passengers had traveled to the area and were giving DNA sample kits for later identification of victims, the IRNA news agency reported.
A team of crash investigators from French air safety agency BEA arrived in Iran later on Monday.
Both Russia and France have provided satellite images but nothing has yet been found in them, the Civil Aviation Organization told IRIB.
An ATR-72 crashed in similar icy conditions in Indiana in the US in 1994, leading some operators to avoid cold weather conditions.
“It is a very safe aircraft but ... operators decided not to use it in cold mountain areas in the US,” said Iranian aviation expert Babak Taghvaee.
“Even newer versions of this aircraft are not good for such cold places and it would be better not to use it for this route and especially with such bad weather and visibility,” he said.
Search for missing Iran plane halted for second night
Search for missing Iran plane halted for second night
Syrian government announces ceasefire in Aleppo
- Syrian government forces have been fighting the Kurdish-led SDF force in Aleppo, where at least 21 people have been killed in several days of clashes
DAMASCUS: Damascus: Syria’s defense ministry announced a ceasefire in several neighborhoods of Aleppo on Friday after days of deadly clashes with Kurdish fighters.
“To prevent any slide toward a new military escalation within residential neighborhoods, the Ministry of Defense announces ... a ceasefire in the vicinity of the Sheikh Maqsoud, Alashrafieh, and Bani Zeid neighborhoods of Aleppo, effective from 3:00 am,” the ministry wrote in a statement.
Syrian government forces have been fighting the Kurdish-led SDF force in Aleppo, where at least 21 people have been killed in several days of clashes.
Both sides have traded blame over who started the clashes on Tuesday, which comes as implementation stalls on a deal to merge the Kurds’ administration and military into the government.
The worst violence in Aleppo since Syria’s Islamist authorities took power has also highlighted regional tensions between Damascus ally Turkiye and Israel, which condemned what it described as attacks against the Kurds.
