Iran locates wreckage of crashed plane

TEHRAN -- Iran has located the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed into western mountains on Sunday, official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.

According to Morteza Salimi, the chief of Rescue and Welfare Organization, debris of the plane was spotted near Nogol area on the 4,000-meters heights of Dena Mountain.

Ramezan Sharif, the spokesman of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), also said IRGC helicopters found the wreckage on Tuesday morning.

Based on the photos taken by the IRGC helicopters, the logo of the crashed plane is clearly visible on the broken piece, Sharif said.

The geographical location of the incident is at north latitude 30-4208 and east longitude 51-4293, Sharif added.

The rescue operators have been dispatched to the area, he said, advising locals to avoid moving to the site of incident.

Also, the state IRIB TV said that some 100 mountaineers are climbing to the location of the accident.

"Soheli, the pilot of the helicopter, who had spotted the debris, said that the plane had crashed near the tip of the mountain," according to IRIB.

On Tuesday, Isfahan Province emergency center said that a mobile phone of the passengers had transmitted signals from a location near Mount Dena where helicopters did not manage to reach the previous day due to bad weather, Press TV reported.

Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran's Minister of Information and Communications Technology, also confirmed that the mobile phone of one of the passengers had been on after the crash and was sending signals from an area near the village of Kohangan.

An official at Iran Civil Aviation Organization said that the pilot had not declared an emergency situation and the plane's Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) had not transmitted signals after the incident.

The Iran Aseman Airlines plane took off from the capital Tehran at 8:00 a.m. local time (0430 GMT) on Sunday and disappeared from the radar screen 50 minutes later in an area which is about 22.4 km from its destination Yasuj city.

Official reports confirmed that all 66 on board were killed in the air crash.