Iranian fighter jet crashes into school, three killed

TEHRAN: An Iranian F-5 fighter jet crashed into a school compound in the northwestern city of Tabriz on Monday, killing two crew and a passerby, authorities said.

"Luckily the school was closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic," local official Mohammad-Bagher Honarvar told state television. The aircraft was on a training mission when it went down around 9:00 am (0530 GMT) in the city’s central district of Monajem, said Honavar, who heads a crisis management unit in East Azerbaijan province.

The head of the local Red Crescent organisation said the plane crashed into an external wall, and that one of the dead was a nearby resident. A blaze broke out at the crash site and firefighters were seen battling the flames as a crowd looked on, in video footage by the official news agency IRNA.

The charred remains of the warplane could be seen amid the rubble of the school’s blackened facade. The plane had been stationed at the Shahid Fakouri air base in Tabriz, base commander General Reza Youssefi told the broadcaster, adding that it was heading back from the training mission when it encountered a technical problem that prevented it from landing.