Black Boxes From Iran's Crashed Plane Recovered

In this photo released by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) a relative of a...

In this photo released by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) a relative of a victim of Wednesday's plane crash cries at the Behesht-e-Fatemeh cemetery just outside the city of Qazvin near 75 miles northwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Thursday, July 16, 2009. Investigators have recovered two of the three black boxes belonging to a Russian-made jetliner that crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran, Iran's state radio reported Thursday. All 168 people aboard the Caspian Airlines aircraft bound for Yerevan, Armenia, on Wednesday were killed. (AP Photo/ISNA,Sina Shiri)

(AP)

The Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport. It crashed at 11:30 am, about 16 minutes after takeoff, outside Jannat Abad, near the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran.

The crash is Iran's worst since February 2003, when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people aboard. That crash was a sign of how maintenance problems have also affected Iran's military.

Caspian Airlines is an Iranian-Russian private joint venture founded in 1993.

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Associated Press reporter Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.

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