An Iranian plane crashed yesterday near an upscale neighborhood as a Kish Air Fokker 50 prepared to land at Sharjah airport in the United Arab Emirates, killing 43 people aboard, Emirates officials said. Three survivors were being treated at a local hospital.

　　Local television reports showed flaming, smoking wreckage and rescue helicopters landing near the scene. A row of bodies covered in red blankets was visible in the footage, and frantic-looking rescue workers in white robes were seen pushing at the plane's debris, searching for survivors.

　　The aircraft crashed at 11:40am in an open area about 3 kilometers from the airport, said Ghanem al-Hajiry, director general of civil aviation and the Sharjah Airport Authority. The cause of the crash was not yet known, he said.

　　Al-Hajiry said there were no casualties on the ground.

　　Colonel Saleh Ali al-Mutawaa, general director of Sharjah Police, said 43 of the 46 people aboard the plane had died: 12 Indians, 19 Iranian, four Egyptians, two Filipinos, two Algerians, one Syrian, one Chinese, one Nigerian and a Bangladeshi.

　　Three crash victims were receiving treatment at al-Qasimi hospital in Sharjah, an emergency room attendant said.

　　Two of them were in critical condition, he said. The attendant did not provide a condition on the third, who was reported as stable by the Emirates' official news agency, WAM. Two of the victims at al-Qasimi hospital were Filipinos, and the third was an Iranian.

　　No other information about the survivors was immediately available. WAM reported that two other people believed to have been taken alive from the scene had died on arrival or later at local hospitals.

　　Witnesses reported seeing about 30 bodies pulled from the wreckage and laid out beneath blankets at the scene. More bodies were seen being taken away in ambulances from the crash scene, which witnesses said was on a road near an upper-class residential neighborhood.

　　Civil aviation and television backed off initial reports the plane crashed on takeoff and said it was returning to Sharjah from the Iranian island of Kish in the Gulf when it went down.

　　Flights to nearby destinations are mainly used by foreigners - particularly Asian workers, including Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos, who make up the bulk of the Emirates' work force - to exit and return in order to remain within Emirati visa requirements. Foreigners whose visas are expiring need to exit and re-enter on a new visa, which takes two or three days to process.

　　Kish is a favorite destination for visa changes because tickets are cheap and visas aren't needed. Cheap hotels cater to visa-changers, many of them laborers or maids in the Emirates.

　　In Tehran, Kish Airline officials refused to comment, even to confirm the crash.

　　In the television footage, flames were visible from the front of the plane, which appeared no longer intact. The plane's tail section could be seen, with no fire in that area. Other indiscernible debris could be seen smoking on the ground.

　　Kish Airline has a fleet of four medium-range TU-154M jets, a Russian aircraft, on domestic and international flights and four short-range Fokker-50s, German-made turboprops, according to the company's Website.

　　Iran has a history of air accidents, often blamed on badly maintained planes. In June, an Iranian military C-130 transport plane crashed outside Tehran, killing all seven people on board. In February, a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 crashed in southeastern Iran, killing all 275 aboard.

　　Last month, a top Iranian aviation official asked the United States to lift sanctions on its airline industry as a humanitarian gesture so the country can buy spare parts for its airplanes.

　　In 1995, an Iranian flight attendant hijacked a Kish Air Boeing 707 to Israel during a flight from Tehran. The plane was returned to Tehran with 174 passengers and crew.

　　Tehran has blamed many of its air crashes on US sanctions, saying they have prevented the country from repairing and replacing an aging fleet that includes many Russian-made Tupolov planes.