Taban Air Tu-54 crashes in Mashhad

The broadcast quoted Iran's civil aviation spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, as saying that no one was killed in the accident. He gave no indication of what might have caused the accident.

The aircraft is said to have caught fire upon landing at Mashhad airport at 7:20 a.m. local time (0350 GMT). The injured have been taken to hospitals in Mashhad, the report added.

Jafarzadeh was reported by Associated Press as saying the Tupolev plane initially took off from Abadan airport in southwestern Iran Saturday evening but landed in Isfahan, central Iran, because of bad weather in Mashhad, its destination.

"The plane took off from Isfahan airport at 5:35 a.m. local time Sunday ... Despite bad weather and minimum visibility, the pilot made an emergency landing because a passenger was ill. But the incident then happened during landing," he said.

Jafarzadeh said the plane was seriously damaged. State television added that part of the aircraft had burned and the left wing and undercarriage were torn off. Air Transport Intelligence reports say images from the scene show the aircraft is resting on its fuselage underside, with no landing-gear in view, and that most of the starboard wing is missing.

It reported that the jet has suffered heavy fire damage at the rear, where the aircraft's three engines are mounted, and the vertical fin and horizontal stabiliser are no longer attached.

The Tu-154 was performing services for Iranian carrier Taban Air, although the fuselage colour scheme shown in the images indicates that the aircraft is from the fleet of Russian carrier Kolavia

Iran has about a dozen Soviet-built Tupolev airliners and has seen numerous crashes in recent years. Its airlines have been plagued by maintenance problems, partly because they are chronically cashed-strapped and cannot buy new planes.

Iranian officials often blame U.S. sanctions that prevent it from refurbishing the American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and also make it difficult to get spare parts or planes from Europe.

The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Last July, a Tupolev passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed shortly after takeoff, nose-diving into a field and killing all those aboard. The Caspian Airlines Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport and was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan.

In February 2006, another Tu-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.

Iran's worst crash came in February 2003 and also involved a Russian-made Ilyushin that plowed into the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people — mostly members of the elite Revolutionary Guard.