Several senior officers in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards are known to be among 11 people killed in a plane crash in north western Iran.
The aircraft came down in a mountainous region of the country after the pilot lost control following landing gear problems.
Among the victims were Ahmad Kazemi, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards ground forces, and seven top commanders, including an intelligence chief.
The crash occurred in Orumiyeh, close to the border with Turkey, an area with notoriously bad weather conditions during winter months.
The incident comes barely a month after an Iranian military transport plane plunged into the foot of a high-rise housing block in Tehran after suffering engine failure.
A total of 108 people were killed in the 6 December incident, which raised concerns about the state of the planes used by the military.
Many of the military aircraft were bought from the US before the Islamic revolution and are starved of spare parts.
Since the revolution, clerical-ruled Iran has been subject to tough US sanctions, hindering the purchase of critical spare parts for all US-made planes in its air force and domestic airlines.
