QAZVIN - An Iranian passenger plane crashed on Wednesday in northwestern Iran, killing all 153 passengers and 15 crew members.

The plane went down 20 kilometers from the city of Qazvin about 15 minutes after takeoff from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport. Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 was en route to Yerevan, the Armenian capital.
The plane was a Russian-made Tupolev.
The crash happened at 11:45 a.m. local time.
A team of eight young Iranian judokas and their two coaches were among the victims.
Witnesses on the ground said the airplane caught fire in the air.
Later in the day, the plane's black box was found.
Speaking at the crash scene, Civil Aviation Organization official Faramarz Sarvi said that the pilot had tried to make an emergency landing outside a residential area but before he could so, part of the plane went up in flames.
Sarvi, who is the deputy director of the CAO Flight Standards Department, said the plane took off at 11:30 a.m. but the control tower lost contact with it after about 15 minutes.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, and other government officials have expressed regret over the tragedy and offered their condolences to the bereaved families. The president ordered an immediate probe into the cause of the crash.
The airplane created a crater measuring 10 to 30 meters wide and 7 meters deep after it hit the ground.
Charred bodies have been found about 500 meters away from the crash scene but the rescue team has not been able to find any bodies or body parts nearby.
The plane broke into very small pieces and only three pieces larger than two meters have been discovered so far.