A flight carrying 157 passengers and 13 crew members crash landed in north-eastern Iran on Sunday, injuring at least 46 people. Iran’s civil aviation spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, said no one was killed in the accident, but he gave no indication of its cause.  Taban Air is a Russian made Iranian passenger plane. 

The Tupelev plane departed from Abadan airport in Southwestern Iran, despite bad weather and minimum visibility.  Jafarzadeh said the pilot made an emergency landing in Isfahan because a passenger was ill.  The plane caught fire when it landed at Mashabad airport at 7:20 am local time, seriously damaging the aircraft.  Iran operates about six Soviet built Tupolev airliners.  Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said it will investigate the cause of the fire and said “weather conditions and visibility problems were most likely behind the incident.”