An IranAir passenger jet carrying around 100 people crashed as it was making an emergency landing yesterday in a snowstorm in the country’s north-west and broke into several pieces, killing 70 of those on board.

The others survived with light injuries.

It was not clear what caused the Boeing-727, operated by Iran’s national airline, to attempt an emergency landing in the city of Orumiyeh, 460 miles north-west of the capital, Tehran. A spokesman for the Iranian civil aviation organisation, Abbas Mosayebi, said only that the plane “faced an incident,” state TV reported.

The network also said the aircraft disappeared from radar and went down in farmland after making a second attempt to land.

Thirty-two people survived, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported, quoting Heidar Heidari, an official with Iran’s Red Crescent Society. He put the number of confirmed dead at 70.

Some of the passengers were only lightly wounded and able to walk off the plane and some had to be taken to hospital, Mr Mosayebi said.

Heavy snow complicated rescue efforts, said the head of the State Emergency Cantre, Gholam Reza Masoumi, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. That report also said there was fog in the area.

The plane broke into several pieces, but there was no explosion or fire, said Mahmoud Mozaffar, head of the rescue department of Iran’s Red Crescent Society, speaking on state TV.