TEHRAN, Jan 15, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Three people on board a small police training aircraft were killed on Wednesday in a crash in northern Iran, state media reported.

"A light training aircraft crashed near the city of Rasht on Wednesday due to a technical malfunction," the official IRNA news agency quoted citing the police, adding that "the pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer were martyred."

Sanctions-hit Iran has suffered several air disasters in recent years, with officials complaining of difficulties in acquiring spare parts to keep its ageing fleets in the air.

The Iranian air transport industry has been subject to a US embargo since 1995, preventing airlines from purchasing civilian aircraft or spare parts and forcing them to ground part of their fleet.

Former president Ebrahim Raisi, his foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and six others was killed in May last year in a helicopter crash.

In 2009, a Tupolev-154 of the Iranian company Caspian Airlines crashed into a field en route to Armenia, killing 168 passengers and crew members in what Iranian authorities said was caused by a technical problem.