Ukraine PM cautions against speculation on air crash
A UKRAINIAN airliner crashed just after take-off from Tehran yesterday, bursting into flames and killing all 176 people on board.
Debris and smouldering engine parts from the Boeing 737, which carrier Ukraine International Airlines said was last serviced two days ago, were strewn across a field south-west of the Iranian capital where rescue workers in face masks laid out scores of body bags.
Among the victims were 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, three Germans and three Britons, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said. Most passengers were in transit, the airline said.
The plane crashed hours after Iran launched missiles at bases housing US forces in Iraq, with the confrontation between Tehran and Washington threatening to cause a wider conflict in the Middle East.
It was the Kiev-based carrier’s first fatal crash, and it said it was doing everything possible to establish the cause. Ukraine was expected to send a team of experts to Iran yesterday to investigate the crash, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in the Ukrainian capital.
“Our priority is to establish the truth and those responsible for this terrible catastrophe,” he said.
Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said he was in touch with Ukraine’s government. “Our hearts are with the loved ones of the victims. We will continue to keep Canadians informed as the situation evolves,” he said on Twitter.
Under international rules, responsibility for investigating the crash lies with Iran, and Iranian state TV said both of the plane’s black box voice and data recorders were found.
The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted the head of Iran’s civil aviation organisation as saying it was not clear which country Iran would send the black boxes to for analysis of the data, but it would not give them to Boeing.
An amateur video, run by Iranian news agencies and purportedly of the crashing plane, showed a flash in a dark sky descending. It was accompanied by comments that the aircraft was “on fire” and then a brighter flash as it appears to hit the ground.
Asked at a briefing in Kiev if the plane could have been hit by a missile, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk cautioned against speculation until the results of the investigation were known.
Iran had earlier fired missiles at bases housing US forces in Iraq in retaliation for a US drone strike last week that killed an Iranian military commander.
Some airlines cancelled Iran and Iraq flights and re-routed others away from both countries’ airspace following the missile strikes.
Safety experts said airliner accidents rarely have a single cause and it took months of investigation to understand all the factors behind them. In Paris, maker of the plane’s engines, French-US firm CFM, co-owned by General Electric and France’s Safran, said speculation regarding the cause was premature.