President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered a probe into the crash.

A witness, quoted by the semi-official ISNA news agency, said the plane's tail burst into flames in the air. The plane circled in the air before crashing. The impact gouged a deep trench in a dirt field, which was shown littered with smoking wreckage in photos published by state media.

According to its Web site, Caspian Airlines was established in 1992 as an Iranian company. The airline operates dozens of regular and charter flights per week between Iranian cities and to international destinations like Hungary, the United Arab Emirates and Syria. Caspian airlines operates a fleet of five, Russian-made Tupolev 154M medium range aircraft, according to CH-Aviation, an aviation Web site.

Caspian Airlines is headquartered in Tehran and has representative offices in Kiev and Budapest, according to the airline website. Representatives of the airline in these offices weren't reachable Wednesday.

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