The others survived with light injuries.

The pilots of the Boeing-727, operated by Iran's national airline, attempted the emergency landing in the city of Orumiyeh after reporting a technical failure to the control tower.

The nature of the technical failure was unclear. A spokesman for the Iranian civil aviation organization, Abbas Mosayebi, said only that the plane "faced an incident," state TV reported.

The network also said the aircraft disappeared from radar and went down in farmland after making a second attempt to land. There was no word on what might have caused the crash. The aircraft was headed from Tehran to Orumiyeh, capital of West Azerbaijan province, a distance of about 460 miles, or 700 kilometers.

Thirty-five people survived, including two crew members, said Javad Mahmoudi, another deputy governor for West Azerbaijan, speaking to State TV. He put the number of confirmed dead at 71.

Some of the passengers were only lightly wounded and able to walk off the plane and some had to be hospitalized, Mosayebi said.

The plane broke into several pieces, but there was no explosion or fire, said Mahmoud Mozaffar, head of the rescue department of Iran's Red Crescent Society, speaking on state TV.