At least 17 people have been killed after a plane burst into flames as it was landing in northeastern Iran. The Aria Airlines plane caught fire as it was landing and skidded off the runway at an airport in the city of Mashhad on Friday. Footage from Iran's Press TV showed the plane tilted at an awkward angle with the mangled front end pointing upwards. At least 19 other people were injured in the incident involving the Russian-designed Ilyushin 62 aircraft, which was carrying 153 passengers from the capital, Tehran. The aircraft's wheels caught fire on landing before it veered off the runway and crashed into a wall, a source told Iran's official IRNA news agency. Ghahreman Rashid, the deputy governor of Khorasan province, said: "All the dead and injured people and passengers have been evacuated and the fire has been completely controlled." Aviation disasters The aircraft was reportedly run by independent Iranian firm Aria Air which offers flights from the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas to Tehran as well as from Mashhad, a popular Shia Muslim pilgrimage centre. The incident comes after a Caspian Airlines plane crashed on July 15 near the city of Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, killing all 168 on board. Iran has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade as it struggles under years of international sanctions which have hampered its ability to buy modern Boeing or Airbus planes. Its civil and military fleet is made up of old aircraft in very poor condition and lacking maintenance. US sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and also make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes. The country relies on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the fall of the Soviet Union. In another Iranian air disaster, 117 people were killed when their Russian-designed Tupolev plane crashed into snow-covered mountains in the west of the country in 2002. Iran's worst crash came in February 2003 when a plane, also a Russian-made Ilyushin, ploughed into mountains in southeastern Iran killing 302 aboard - mostly members of the elite Revolutionary Guard.