Air crash kills Iran generals

Tehran - A crash has killed Iran's air force commander, four generals and seven other officers, delivering a severe blow to the Iranian military, Reuter reports.

The Lockheed C-140 JetStar carrying the commander, Brigadier General Mansour Sattari, and senior aides crashed on Thursday night when trying to land at Isfahan in central Iran after developing technical problems, Tehran Radio said.

Apart from the four brigadier generals killed with Sattari, the victims included two colonels, a major, a captain and three lieutenants. A funeral was held in Isfahan yesterday.

It is the second time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iran's air force chief and senior officers have died in an air crash.

Sattari was appointed in January 1987 in the last stages of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

He oversaw the post-war overhaul of the air forcein 1988, when Iran acquired Russian-built MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-24 fighter planes to boost its pre-1979 fleet of US-built F-4, F-5 and F-14 aircraft.