A plane carrying 270 passengers, mostly military personnel, crashed in southern Iran tonight, apparently killing all on board.
The plane was on a domestic route from Zahedan, on the Pakistan border, to Kerman, about 500 miles south-east of Tehran.
It crashed about 50 miles from its destination, in a mountainous area near the city of Shahdad.
The Russian-built Antonov plane lost contact with the control tower at 5.30pm local time (2.00 GMT).
The 270 passengers were members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, according to local television reports.
An official said the forces had visited the impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province, of which Zahedan is the capital, for an "important duty". The military corps is seen as a defender of Iran's Islamic regime.
There were no more details available on the crash.
Tonight's crash was the latest in a string of air disasters in Iran involving mostly Russian-built airliners.
A Ukrainian An-140 aircraft flew into a mountainside on December 23, 2002 while preparing to land at an airport near the central city of Isfahan, killing all the estimated 46 scientists aboard.
In February 2002, the Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 airliner, carrying 119 people, smashed into snow-covered mountains not far from its destination of Khorramabad, 230 miles south-west of Tehran. PA