Three people have died after a fighter jet crashed into a stadium in a city in north-west Iran, according to reports.
The state-run news agency IRNA said the crash killed two pilots and a civilian.
The F-5 fighter crashed in a residential area of Tabriz, a city of 1.6 million residents. Authorities are investigating the incident.
General Reza Yousefi, commander of the air base in Tabriz, said the jet had been used for training and suffered a technical problem in the air.
“Pilots could not reach the runway,” he said.
The report quoted Gen Yousefi as saying: “The Pilots sacrificed themselves – they could (have) used the ejection system, but they refused to do it.”
Instead, they headed for the stadium “to keep people safe”, he added.
A state TV reporter at the crash scene said the plane went down on a football pitch and because the width of the pitch was not long enough, it left the pitch and hit a school wall.
No one was inside. Schools were closed amid Iran’s sixth wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iran’s air force has an assortment of US-made military aircraft purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
It also has Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi planes. Decades of Western sanctions have made it hard to maintain the aging fleet.
