JANNAT ABAD, Iran (Reuters) - A Tupolev aircraft crashed in Iran on Wednesday on its way to Armenia, after catching fire mid-air and plowing into farmland killing all 168 people on board just 16 minutes after take-off.

In the worst crash in Iran for six years, the Russian-built Caspian Airlines plane, left only scattered bits of incinerated metal and fragments of the bodies of 153 passengers and 15 crew across a wide area around a deep smoking crater in the ground.

The aircraft, traveling to Armenia's capital Yerevan from Tehran, crashed near the northwestern city of Qazvin shortly before noon (0730 GMT).

Eight members of Iran's national junior judo team and two coaches were among the dead as well as a former Iranian MP representing Iran's Armenian minority and, reportedly, the wife of the head of Georgia's diplomatic mission in Iran.

"I saw a finger of a passenger on the ground. There is no sign of the airplane, just small pieces of metal," said a Reuters witness. "I do not see even a complete leg or arm."

Weeping relatives and friends gathered at Yerevan airport where a notice on a wall listed people who were on board. Iran is home to thousands of ethnic Armenians. Doctors treated relatives for shock and heart problems.

Six Armenian and two Georgian citizens were on board, the deputy head of the Armenian civilian aviation authority Arsen Poghosyan told a media briefing at Yerevan Airport. Two crew and 29 passengers were Iranian citizens with ethnic Armenian backgrounds, he said.

Fina Karapetian, an Armenian in her 30s, said her sister and two nephews, 11 and 6, were on board the crashed plane. "I heard everyone in the aircraft has died. What will I do without Armen and Vahe?" she said, before fainting.

Iran is home to some 100,000 ethnic Armenians, many of whom frequently use the flights between Tehran and Yerevan to visit relatives in Armenia.

TOTALLY DESTROYED

"The Tupolev plane has been totally destroyed and the corpses, unfortunately, have been totally burned and destroyed," Qazvin police commander Massoud Jafarinasab told semi-official Fars News Agency.

A local official said the aircraft had technical problems and tried to make an emergency landing. "Unfortunately the plane caught fire in the air and it crashed," he told Fars.

A witness said he had seen the plane's left engine on fire in the air, state broadcaster IRIB said. But state radio said the pilot had made no mention of any technical problem in a taped conversation with a control tower.

"Fifteen or sixteen minutes after take-off the plane fell near the Iranian city Qazvin about 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of Tehran," Caspian Airline's representative in Yerevan Arlen Davudyan told Reuters, adding that the cause of the crash was not clear nor had the black box been found.

"It's been a major disaster with pieces of aircraft spread over an area of 200 sq meters," a fire brigade official said.

"There was an explosion which left an indentation 10 meters deep in the ground. There was nothing we could do. We tried to put out the fire as best we could," he told state television.

An official from Georgia's embassy in Yerevan was on board and the wife of the head of its diplomatic mission in Tehran, Gocha Gvaramadze, was also believed to be on the plane, an official from Georgia's Embassy in Armenia told Rustavi-2 TV.

A boarding card belonging to a Japanese citizen was found at the crash site, IRNA said. Yerevan airport officials said an aircraft would take relatives to visit the site. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered a probe into the crash.

Air safety experts have said Iran has a poor record, with a string of crashes in the past few decades -- many involving Russian-made aircraft.

U.S. sanctions against Iran have prevented it from buying new aircraft or spares from the West, forcing it to supplement its aging fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes with aircraft from the former Soviet Union.

It was the third deadly crash of a Tupolev Tu-154 in Iran since 2002 and the deadliest crash since 2003 when an Ilyushin Il-76, also Russian built, crashed into an Iranian mountain.

Tehran-based Caspian Airlines was set up in 1993 and flies an all-Tupolev fleet linking Iranian cities and also routes to the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine and Armenia.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran, Hasmik Mkrtchyan in Yerevan, Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi and Jon Hemming, Jason Neely in London; Writing by Fredrik Dahl and Peter Millership; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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