Among 176 people killed on a Ukrainian passenger plane which crashed near Tehran in the early hours of this morning, Ukrainian media says — as officials in Iran asserted that it had suffered a technical failure rather than being shot down.
Among 176 people killed on a Ukrainian passenger plane which crashed near Tehran in the early hours of this morning, Ukrainian media says — as officials in Iran asserted that it had suffered a technical failure rather than being shot down.The Boeing 737 jet came down just three minutes after take-off from Imam Khomeini International Airport, sparking fresh alarm in the region just hours after Iran launched a missile attack on US bases in Iraq.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that there were no survivors.
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.
Netizens sparked speculation that the jet could have been shot down accidentally by nervous Iranian air defence soldiers, with Middle East tensions spiralling after general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike.
Just hours before the crash, the US Federal Aviation Administration had banned US airlines from flying over Iran, Iraq and the waters of the Persian Gulf due to the Middle East crisis.
However, the Ukrainian embassy in Tehran reported that the crash had been caused by an engine failure rather than terrorism.
Iranian officials said the pilot had lost control of the Boeing jet after a fire struck one of the plane’s engines, but said the crew had not reported an emergency and did not say what caused the fire.
According to flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24, the three-year-old Boeing 737-800 reached an altitude of 7,925ft before tracking of the flight suddenly ended after three minutes.
Iranian media quoted an aviation official as saying the pilot of the airliner did not declare an emergency.
Television footage showed debris and smouldering engine parts were strewn across a field, and rescue workers with face masks retrieving bodies of the victims.
“The fire is so heavy that we cannot (do) any rescue… we have 22 ambulances, four bus ambulances and a helicopter at the site,” Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran’s emergency services, told Iranian state television.
The Ukrainian embassy in Iran said, “according to preliminary data the plane crashed due to engine failure for technical reasons. As of now, versions of a terrorist attack or missile attack are ruled out.”
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump tweeted that ‘all is well’ and ‘so far so good’ after the attack, with no early reports of casualties.
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 and 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.
Source: DailyMail
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