Ukrainian passenger plane crashes in Iran, killing all 170 people on board

Ukrainian passenger plane crashes in Iran, killing all 170 people on board

A Ukrainian passenger plane carrying at least 170 people has crashed minutes after takeoff near the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Iranian state media reported that the Kiev-bound Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 crashed near just three minutes after takeoff from Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all on board.

Ali Kashani, a spokesman for Imam Khomeini International Airport, told Fars news agency: ‘It is predicted that technical problems caused the accident.’

But video footage tweeted by the BBC’s Iran correspondent, Ali Hashem, appeared to show the plane already burning in the sky before it crashed in a massive explosion, sparking speculation that the jet had been shot down.

Flight data shows the three-year-old Boeing 737-800 reached an altitude of 7,925ft and then suddenly disappeared.

Photos later published by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency showed rescue officials in a farm field, with what appeared to be pieces of the aircraft laying nearby.

The plane ‘crashed around Parand’, about 60 kilometres south-west of the Iranian capital, state media said.

An investigation team was at the site of the crash in southwestern outskirts of Tehran, Iran’s civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told the Associated Press.

‘After taking off from Imam Khomeini international airport it crashed between Parand and Shahriar,’ Jafarzadeh said. ‘An investigation team from the national aviation department was dispatched to the location after the news was announced.’

The crash came hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting two bases in Iraq housing U.S. forces in retaliation for the killing of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

President Trump approved a drone strike that killed the general shortly after he arrived in Baghdad, Iraq.

Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing American troops on Tuesday night, hours before the Ukrainian plane crashed.

The Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq that Trump visited in December 2018 and the Erbil base in Iraqi Kurdistan were both struck by the missiles on Tuesday at about 5.30 pm (EST), but no casualties were reported.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which controls the country’s missile program, confirmed that they fired the rockets just hours after the slain general’s funeral, and reported the operation’s name was ‘Martyr Soleimani’.

Trump and his advisers are under pressure to disclose more details about the intelligence that led to the U.S. strike on Soleimani.

The Ukrainian airlines jet which crashed was a Boeing 737-800 – a very common single-aisle, twin-engine jetliner used for short to medium-range flights. Thousands of the planes are used by airlines around the world.

Introduced in the late 1990s, it is an older model than the Boeing 737 MAX, which has been grounded for nearly 10 months following two deadly crashes.

A number of 737-800 aircraft have been involved in deadly accidents over the years.

In March 2016, a Flydubai 737-800 from Dubai crashed while trying to land at Rostov-on-Don airport in Russia, killing 62 on board. Another 737-800 flight from Dubai, operated by Air India Express, crashed in May 2010 while trying to land in Mangalore, India, killing more than 150 onboard.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Boeing, like other airline manufacturers, typically assists in crash investigations. However, that effort, in this case, could be affected by the U.S. sanctions campaign in place on Iran since President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in May 2018.

Both Airbus and Boeing had been in line to sell billions of dollars of aircraft to Iran over the deal, which saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. But Trump’s decision halted the sales.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had previously made veiled threats to American airliners after tweeting a reference to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.

Rouhani tweeted that America should ‘never threaten Iran’ after warning the US should ‘remember the number 290’ in reference to an incident when the US Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger jet in the Persian Gulf in July 1988, killing 290.

Some Middle East experts have taken this as a veiled reference to the Lockerbie terrorist attack, which saw a bomb destroy Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988 killing 270 – months after the downing of Iranian flight 655.

Libya has always been blamed for the Lockerbie bombing, and one of their intelligence agents was jailed in Scotland for the terror attack.

But Western spies believe Tehran played a role in the attack and executed it in revenge for the downing of the Iranian passenger jet.

(Daily Mail)