Saturday, July 25, 2009 TEHRAN: At least 30 people were killed when a passenger plane caught fire during its landing in northeastern Iran on Friday, the state news agency reported. The plane from Iran's Aria Air airline with 153 passengers on board caught fire and skidded into walls near the runway during its landing in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, said the report. The accident, which happened at 18:10 local time (1340 GMT), also injured another 19 people, agency said. All survivors in the plane had been evacuated from the crash scene and the fire had been completely under control. Video aired by Iran's English-language satellite channel showed that the cockpit of the Russian-made Il-62 plane, which was travelling from Tehran to Mashhad, was totally damaged. It was the second deadly air accident involving an Iranian airliner within 10 days. On July 15, a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the northwestern city of Qazvin, killing all 168 people on board.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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