Tehran: An Iranian military transport plane with 94 people on board crashed into a building in a residential area of Tehran, state-run television reported.
The official IRNA news agency reported that 119 p[eople have been killed and 10 bodies retrieved from the site of crash.
The C-130 aircraft was headed for the port city of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran when the pilot reported technical difficulties and was returning to base, according to Abdul Rahimi, a spokesman for Iran's civil aviation authority.
Journalist Shirzad Bozorgmehr told CNN there are unconfirmed reports that the aircraft was carrying military personnel and journalists.
The ISNA students' news agency reported the plane smashed into a 10-story building and burst into flames. Other Iranian media said the aircraft had hit an apartment block, Reuters reported.
"I can see flames licking out of the windows of the fourth floor of the building," said a Reuters journalist at the scene.
Shahram Alamdari, a Red Crescent official, told Reuters by telephone from the scene: "It is awful down here. I am suffocating." Alamdari then hung up the phone.
In Iran's last major military air disaster, an Iranian Ilyushin-76 troop carrier crashed in the southeast of the country on February 19, 2003, killing all 276 Revolutionary Guard soldiers and crew aboard.
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