World News | ÏRAN-PLANE-2NDLD CRASH F-5 Fighter Plane Crash Kills 3 in Iran's Northwest

Tehran, Feb 21 (AP) A fighter jet crashed onto a football pitch in a city in northwest Iran, the country's state-run news agency reported Monday. The crash killed two pilots and a civilian.

IRNA said the F-5 fighter crashed onto the field in a residential area of Tabriz, a city of 1.6 million residents. Authorities are investigating the incident, the report said.

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Gen. Reza Yousefi, commander of the air base in Tabriz, said the crashed jet had been used for training and suffered a technical problem on its final flight.

“Pilots could not reach the runway,” he said, according to the report.

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In an effort to avoid crashing into the residential area, the pilots guided the jet to the football pitch, he said.

The report quoted Yousefi as saying: “The pilots sacrificed themselves, they could (have) used the ejection system, but they refused to do it.”

The pilots headed for the pitch “to keep people safe,” Yousefi said in the report.

A state TV reporter at the crash scene said that because the pitch was not long enough, the plane left the field and hit a school wall.

No one was inside. Schools were closed amid Iran's sixth wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Iran's air force has an assortment of US-made military aircraft purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

It also has Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi planes. Decades of Western sanctions have made it hard to maintain the aging fleet. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)