An airliner caught fire on landing at Tehran's Mehrabad airport, but all 100 passengers were evacuated without injury, officials say.

The fire broke out in the evening on March 19 after the aircraft's landing gear did not open properly, the head of the country’s emergency department, Pirhossein Kolivand, told state television.

However, the general director of Iran Air denied that the plane caught fire and said the it was being moved from the location of its final stop.

He said that the blaze was later brought under control.

The airplane was reportedly a Fokker 100 belonging to the country’s national airline, Iran Air and was carrying 24 passengers including two infants.

The semiofficial news agency Fars reported that the pilot was not able to open the back wheels of the plane and circled the airport attempting to open all the wheels before landing the plane on its body.

Under decades of international sanctions, Iran's commercial passenger aircraft fleet has aged, with air accidents occurring regularly in recent years.