IRAN: 168 KILLED IN PLANE CRASH

16 MINUTES AFTER TAKING OFF PLANE CRASH
168 REPORTEDLY KILLED IN IRAN

TEHRAN, Iran (Associated Press) – An Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed a quarter-hour after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering to pieces. State television said all on board were killed. The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was shown littered with smoking wreckage in footage shown on state TV. It showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small pieces, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies. It crashed at about 11:30 am, 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, TV reported.

The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said. Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman told that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board. State TV said all were killed. A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizens were also on board. Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.

Iran has frequent plane crashes: In February 2006, a Russian-made TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Our efforts are very tiny to conquer over the laws of the material nature. It is simply waste of time. You cannot become happy by conquering over the material nature. Now science have discovered so many things. Just the airplane from India. It would have taken months together to reach your country, but by airplane we can come here overnight. These advantage are there. But along with these advantages, there are so many disadvantages. When you are on the plane on the sky, you know you are in the midst of desert..., of danger. At any moment there can be crash. You may fall down on the sea, you may fall down anywhere. So it is not very safe. So similarly, any method we manufacture, we discover, to conquer over the laws of material nature, it is backed by another set of dangerous things. That is the law of nature. That is not the way to get out of this material pangs of life..

Srila A.C. BV Swami Prabhupada
"Class on on Bhagavad-gita - 7 . 1 - Los Angeles - December 2, 1968"