TEHRAN – A small Falcon airplane crashed in northern Iraq near the border with Iran last Thursday, killing all seven or eight people on board, a local source told the Mehr News Agency on Sunday.

The plane, which had taken off from an airbase in the Republic of Azerbaijan heading for an unknown destination, crashed in the mountainous Kurdistan region near the Iraq-Iran border, the source said.

Three to five of the plane’s passengers were Israelis, the source added, saying there is no detailed information about the cause of the crash or the plane’s mission due to the restrictions U.S. forces introduced in the region.

Unofficial reports by some Western media outlets had previously said that a plane carrying German passengers had crashed in northern Iraq.