Several newspapers claimed the C-130 transport plane -- bought from the United States before the Islamic revolution nearly three decades ago and starved of spare parts -- had been told to take off despite serious reservations.

Just minutes after leaving the runway, the plane suffered engine failure and crashed into the foot of a housing block in a densely-populated area of the city. Official media have put the death toll at between 108 and 116, including all 94 passengers and crew.

"The plane should have taken off at seven in the morning. My husband called me from the plane at eight to say there were technical problems. I was very worried," recounted the wife of Mohammad Karbalai, a photographer killed in the crash.

"I called him back at 10 o'clock, and the plane was still on the ground. He said the pilot was refusing to take off because of technical problems," she told her late husband's newspaper, the conservative Hamshahri daily.

Among the dead passengers were 68 journalists who were being flown to the southeastern port city of Bandar Abbas and were then to travel to Charbahar further south to report on military exercises.

"The authorities must explain why a plane with technical problems was authorised to take off," demanded Hamshahri, one of Iran's biggest selling dailies.

"How much longer are we going to play with lives? How much longer do we have to use planes that should be sent to the scrap heap?" Rassoul Khadem, a member of Tehran's city council, told the Shargh newspaper.

Several other Iranian journalists also said colleagues aboard the doomed plane had called them before take-off to say that the pilot did not want to fly.

But army deputy chief of staff General Nami told the semi-official Mehr news agency that these reports were just "rumours" and were not true.

"It is a disaster for the journalistic community, and the government is declaring a day of mourning for the media," said Culture Minister Mohammad Hossein Safar-Harandi, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

Iran's air force is believed to have no more than around 15 of the US-made C-130s in operation. It bought the workhorses, also known as Hercules, before the 1979 Islamic revolution when Iran was ruled by the Washington-backed shah.

Since then, clerical-ruled Iran has been subject to tough US sanctions, hindering the purchase of critical spare parts for all US-made planes in its air force, civilian flag carrier Iran Air and domestic airlines.

A C-130 crashed near Tehran due to technical problems in June 2003, killing seven people. In February 2000 a C-130 crashed on take-off and collided with an Iran Air Airbus 300, killing 10 people.

And in 1997, a C-130 crashed near the northwestern city of Mashhad after encountering engine trouble, killing 86 people.

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