TEHRAN, Iran — Search teams pressed through fog, rain and strong wind Thursday to recover some mutilated bodies from the mountainous site of a military plane crash that killed 302 Iranian soldiers, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
In the country's worst plane crash, the Russian-made Ilyushin operated by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards crashed Wednesday evening en route from Zahedan, on the Pakistani border, to Kerman, about 500 miles southeast of Tehran.
All aboard — 18 crew members and 284 passengers — were members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite group under the direct control of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The guards protect Iran's borders and defend ruling hard-liners in this ultraconservative society.
Bad weather was hampering efforts by rescuers to retrieve the remains that were found, grounding helicopters and slowing down mountaineers, the news...