February 20, 2003

Teams Scour Mountain After Iran's Worst Air Crash

Rescue teams searched on Thursday for clues to the cause of Iran's worst air disaster, in which 302 Revolutionary Guards died when their Russian-built troop carrier crashed into a mountainside in southeast Iran.
[...]A senior source close to the government told Reuters scores of high-ranking military officials were among the dead. It was not clear why so many personnel were traveling together.

Formed shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, the Revolutionary Guards force is independent of the regular army and played a key role in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Today it numbers about 120,000 personnel and answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- the head of Iran's Shi'ite Muslim establishment.
[...]The death toll exceeded that of a 1988 disaster, when an Iran Air A-300 Airbus was shot down over the Gulf by the U.S. warship Vincennes which wrongly identified it as an attacking fighter. All 290 people on board were killed in that incident.

I remember this "disaster:" and there was that rumor that said that Iran had filled the plane with corpses so that they could accuse us of this "act of war."
We were having problems with that Islamist Khaddafy in Libya, at the time, if memory serves, which would explain why the U.S.S. Vincennes was patrolling there.
So where were all these Iranian soldiers going?
I don't suppose it was any part of Iraq, do you?
And good old Reuters!
They manage to work in another "blame the US" indirectly for this one, too: because of US sanctions on trade with Iran, they were forced to fly the crappier, crash-prone Russian-made planes!
And then there was this crash in Pakistan:
Pakistan Air Force Chief, 16 Others Die in Crash

The commander of Pakistan's air force, Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, his wife and 15 other people were killed in a plane crash on Thursday, the air force said.

Authorities said it was an accident but did not give details. State-run Pakistan Television said the crash was caused by "technical reasons," but did not elaborate.hose killed included two air vice marshals, two air force commodores and Mir's wife Bilqees.
[...]

A senior air force office said Mir's wife had been traveling in her official role as chairwoman of the Pakistan Air Force Women's Welfare Association. All the other dead were air force personnel, including eight crew, state television said.
[...]In 1988, Pakistan's then-president, General Mohammad Zia- ul-Haq, died in a mysterious crash of a military plane in the Punjab province. The cause of the crash has never been established.

OK, this one was probably caused by bad weather, but these things, which for better or worse provide the opportunity for their regimes to "clean house," seem to happen with frightening regularity over there.
Anyway, my condolences go out to the families of the victims who were somebody's friends, loved ones and relatives.