All 11 people who were on board a private Turkish jet that crashed in south-western Iran on Sunday are dead, Iranian state media report.
The jet was flying from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Istanbul when it came down in the Zagros Mountains.
It had eight passengers, who Turkish media identified as Mina Basaran, the daughter of Turkish businessman Huseyin Basaran, and seven of her friends.
They had reportedly visited the UAE to celebrate her forthcoming marriage.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, but Iran’s state news agency Irna cited an official as saying that the aircraft’s “black boxes” had been recovered.
Mina Basaran, 28, flew to the UAE with her friends last week for a hen party.
She had been posting photos of their trip on her Instagram account, which has more than 65,000 followers. The last picture, which was posted on Saturday, showed eight women posing in pink and white bath robes at a Dubai hotel.
On Sunday afternoon, they boarded the jet belonging to Huseyin Basaran’s company, Basaran Investment Holding, at Sharjah International Airport. The two pilots and one flight attendant were also women, Turkish media said.
Data from the FlightRadar24 website shows that about 80 minutes after taking off the jet rapidly gained altitude and then dropped more than 3,050m (10,000ft) before disappearing off the radar.
The Isan news agency cited Iranian civil aviation officials as saying the pilot had requested to fly at a lower altitude due to technical problems.
A witness told state television that the jet was on fire before it crashed near the city of Shahr-e Kord, about 370km (230 miles) south of Tehran.
Photos of the scene of the crash published on Monday showed the wreckage of the plane spread over a mountainside.
It also cited a local Red Crescent official, Reza Zaheri, as saying that all 11 bodies had been recovered from the scene after a 15-hour operation that involved 80 people.
Turkey’s ministry of transport said it would send a team of investigators to the scene.
The crash comes less than a month after a passenger plane operated by Iran’s Aseman Airlines crashed in the Zagros Mountains en route from Tehran to Yasuj, killing all 66 people on board.
