Witness Iraj Moradin told The Associated Press the plane appeared to be circling the airport when its tail suddenly burst into flames, leaving a smoke trail as it plummeted. He said he fled when he thought the plane was going to crash into a gas station, but turned in time to see it hit the building.

The C-130 is built by Lockheed. The plane may have been sold to the Iranian air force when the United States had close relations with the Iranian monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before the Islamic revolution in 1979.

In April, an Iranian military Boeing 707 with 157 people aboard skidded off a runway at Tehran airport and caught fire, killing three people. In 2003, a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people.

In 2002, a Ukrainian-built aircraft carrying aerospace scientists crashed in central Iran, killing all 44 people aboard. And in 1988, an Iran Air A300 Airbus was shot down by the USS Vincennes over the Persian Gulf, killing 290.