At least 270 people aboard an Iranian military plane were killed yesterday when it crashed in southeastern Iran, state media reported.

The official IRNA news agency put the death toll at 280 and said all the fatalities were members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

State television said 270 people were killed in the crash of the Russian-built plane, which was travelling from Zahedan, near Iran's border with Pakistan, and the city of Kerman.

A government official, who declined to be named, said the crash in the mostly desert region appeared to have been caused by bad weather.

He said the plane had gone down about 80 kilometres from Kerman, which lies 1,075 kilometres southeast of Tehran.

A senior source close to the government told Reuters some high-ranking military officials were among the fatalities.

State television had earlier reported that air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane at about 5:30 p.m. local time (1400 GMT).

Last year, all 119 people aboard an Iran Air Tours died when the Tupolev-154 aircraft crashed near the western city of Khorramabad.

In 1988, an Iran Air A-300 Airbus was shot down over the Gulf by the US warship Vincennes which wrongly identified it as an attacking fighter. All 290 people on board were killed.