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Mehdi, a resident living in Azadi town near Tehran, was about to cross the four-lane Tehran-Karaj driveway, when he felt the vibration of a roar overhead as a huge object rammed into a wall across the street.
It happened so quickly that Mehdi says he barely had time to flinch. "I heard three explosions. The last one was so powerful. It shocked me numb." Next thing he saw was the tail of an aircraft lying in front of him in the middle of the road.
An Antonov-140 passenger plane crashed into a military complex in Azadi, five km to the west of Tehran Sunday morning, killing at least 39 people of the 48 people on board.
Shortly after the plane took off from Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, the pilot made an urgent call to ground centers warning of an engine failure, the IRNA news agency reported citing Mohammad Ilkhani, head of Iran's Airports Company.
The plane covered some distance with only one functioning engine and crashed just out of Tehran.
Residents nearby told reporters it took about 10 minutes before anyone dared to approach the wreckage after the explosions. "The plane, trees and everything around were on fire. Smoke can be seen miles away," said Ali who drove to the site after seeing the smoke.
The crash site was heavily guarded by police and soldiers, who banned journalists from entering the burning military base where fire engines continued to sprayed water over the wreckage though the fire had been stifled.
The driveway outside the walled military base was crowded with soldiers, police, local residents and reporters. Some examiners culled pieces of the scattered parts from the plane while the tail, which broke apart upon landing, was lifted onto a truck to be removed from the road.
Rescuers said that nine injured people were moved to two large hospitals in Tehran by helicopters. While the explosions made bodies unrecognizable and DNA tests were needed to identify them, Bashr Nazpavar, head of Iran's forensic authorities, said.
Having retrieved the black box, authorities are investigating the cause of the air accident, Ahmad Majidi, deputy minister of Road and Urban Development, said.
This is not the first time an Antonov-140 crashed in Iran. At least 44 people died after an Antonov-140 crashed in central Iran' s Esfahan city at the end of 2002, including Ukrainian and Russian airplane designers who were about to attend the inauguration of Iran-built Antonov-140.
In 2009, another Antonov-140 crashed in a training flight in Esfahan due to engine failure during takeoff. Five people on board were killed.
"No flight permission should have been issued to this plane. The first plane of this type had crashed in Isfahan," Iranian lawmaker Mehrdad Lahouti said in a parliament meeting on Sunday, according to semi-official ISNA news agency. Iranian lawmakers visited the manufacturing complex of the plane twice and expressed concerns over its safety.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suspended all flights of Antonov-140 aircraft on Sunday pending a full investigation into the crash, IRNA news agency reported. He also urged technical standardization of passenger planes in Iran.
Western sanctions have barred Iran from importing parts to maintain the country's passenger planes, mounting pressure for Iran to develop its own aviation industry. Iran started manufacturing its own Antonov-140 through cooperation with Ukraine in 2003.
Some Iranians have also blamed Western sanctions for other air crashes in recent years. The last major airliner crash in Iran was in January 2011. An Iran Air Boeing-727 crashed in a snowstorm in northwest Iran's Urumia city, killing at least 77 people.
