Two people dead in small plane crash in Ohio

​Crashed into a stadium

A fighter jet crashed into a stadium in a city in northwest Iran, the country's state-run news agency reported Monday. The crash killed two pilots and a civilian.

IRNA said the F-5 fighter crashed into a stadium in a residential area of Tabriz, a city of 1.6 million residents. Authorities are investigating the incident, the report said.

​Technical problem

Gen. Reza Yousefi, commander of the air base in Tabriz, said the crashed jet had been used for training and suffered a technical problem on its final flight.

``Pilots could not reach the runway,'' he said, according to the report.

​"To keep people safe"

In an effort to avoid crashing into the residential area, the pilots guided the jet to the stadium, he said. The report quoted Yousefi as saying: ``The pilots sacrificed themselves, they could (have) used the ejection system, but they refused to do it.''

The pilots headed for the stadium ``to keep people safe,'' Yousefi said in the report.

​Went down on a pitch

A state TV reporter at the crash scene said the plane went down on a soccer 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.

​Aging fleet

Iran's air force has an assortment of U.S.-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.