Iran Says It 'Unintentionally' Shot Down Ukraine Passenger Jet

By Marc Jourdier

Iran said on Saturday its armed forces "unintentionally" shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed after taking off from Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard.

President Hassan Rouhani said a military investigation had found "missiles fired due to human error" brought down the Boeing 737 on Wednesday, calling it an "unforgivable mistake".

The about-turn came after officials in Iran had categorically denied Western claims that the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) airliner had been struck by a missile in a catastrophic error.

The plane, which had been bound for Kiev, slammed into a field shortly after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport before dawn on Wednesday.

It came only hours after Iran's armed forces launched a wave of missiles at bases hosting American forces in Iraq in response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran's top generals, in a US drone strike.

Iran had come under mounting pressure to allow a "credible" investigation after video footage emerged appearing to show the plane being hit by a fast-moving object before a flash appears.

The Ukrainian and Canadian leaders called for accountability after Iran's admission.

The armed forces were first to acknowledge the error, saying the Boeing 737 had been mistaken for a "hostile plane" at a time when enemy threats were at the highest level.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake," Rouhani said on Twitter.

"Armed Forces' internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people."

Iran 'Saddened'

In a statement posted on the government's website, Rouhani said Iran's armed forces had been on alert for possible attacks by the Americans after the "martyrdom" of Soleimani.

"Iran is very much saddened by this catastrophic mistake and I, on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, express my deep condolences to the families of victims of this painful catastrophe," he said.

Rouhani added he had ordered "all relevant bodies to take all necessary actions (to ensure) compensation" to the families of those killed.

"This painful incident is not an issue that can be overcome easily."

He said "the perpetrators of this unforgivable mistake will be prosecuted".

"It is necessary to take necessary steps and measures to remove the weak points of the country's defence systems so that such a catastrophe is never repeated again."

The majority of passengers on UIA Flight PS752 were dual national Iranian-Canadians but also included Ukrainians, Afghans, Britons and Swedes.

Demands for Justice

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded Saturday that Iran punish those responsible for the downing of the plane and pay compensation.

"We expect Iran... to bring the guilty to the courts," the Ukrainian leader wrote on Facebook.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said closure and accountability were needed in the wake of the incident.

Trudeau also demanded "transparency, and justice for the families and loved ones of the victims".

"This is a national tragedy, and all Canadians are mourning together," his office said in a statement.

The disaster came as tensions soared in the region after the Soleimani killing, and fears grew of an all-out war between Iran and its arch-enemy the United States.

Washington said the Soleimani strike was carried out to prevent "imminent", large-scale attacks on American embassies.

Tehran had vowed "severe revenge" for the killing of Soleimani before launching missiles at the bases in Iraq.

"Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted.

"Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations."

Iran has invited the United States, Ukraine, Canada and others to join the crash investigation.

It is Iran's worst civil aviation disaster since 1988 when the US military said it shot down an Iran Air plane over the Gulf by mistake, killing all 290 people on board.

Video footage of the UIA 737, which The New York Times said it had verified, emerged and appeared to show the moment the airliner was hit.

A fast-moving object is seen rising at an angle into the sky before a bright flash appears, which dims and then continues moving forward. Several seconds later, an explosion is heard and the sky lights up.

Many airlines from around the world cancelled flights to and from Iran in the wake of the crash, or rerouted flights away from Iranian airspace.

Nations around the world have called for restraint and de-escalation, and fears of a full-blown conflict have subsided after US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Iran appeared to be standing down after targeting the US bases in Iraq.

Photo: IRNA

Cargo Plane Crashes in Iran, Killing 15

A military cargo plane overshot a runway, crashed and caught fire during a botched landing near the Iranian capital Tehran, killing 15 people, the army said Monday.

The plane was carrying meat from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan when it crashed near the capital Tehran, the army said in a statement.

"The plane had 16 passengers, 14 of whom were the army crew and two were civilians; 15 were martyred," spokesman Amir Taghikhani said. "One, the flight engineer, was injured and is currently in hospital."

The charred remains of a plane's fuselage with Iranian Air Force colors, its nose wedged through the wall of what appeared to be a house, were seen in photographs obtained by AFP.

Wreckage including a landing gear and a mangled jet engine were scattered nearby.

"A (Boeing) cargo 707 place carrying meat took off from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and had an emergency landing at Fath airport this morning," the army said in a statement on its website.

"It exited the runway during the landing and caught fire after hitting the wall at the end of the runway."

Fath airport is in Alborz province, just northwest of Tehran.

The Fars news agency, considered close to the military, earlier said there were 16 people onboard and that only the flight engineer had survived.

State broadcaster IRIB showed footage of burning wreckage. 

Still Smoldering

Investigators found the plane's black box, which will provide more details about the crash, deputy Alborz governor Azizollah Shahbazi told Tasnim news agency.

Pictures published by local media showed the charred carcasses of the animals on board, still smoldering inside one of the buildings the plane smashed into.

Fars carried a video showing emergency teams cutting through the plane's nose, which had penetrated what it said was an empty residential complex.

Iran's aging air fleet has had a string of crashes in recent years.

Iran's Aseman Airlines was ordered to ground its fleet of ATR planes in February last year after one of them crashed in the Zagros mountains, killing all 66 people onboard. 

Iran has been subject to tough US sanctions for years, hindering the purchase of new aeroplanes and critical spare parts for the US-made planes in its air force, civilian flag carrier Iran Air and domestic airlines.

 Hopes of a change in the situation were dashed last May when Washington pulled out of a landmark 2015 deal over Iran's nuclear program, reimposing sanctions that had been lifted as part of the multilateral accord.

Photo Credit: IRNA

Iran Students in Rare Protest Over Deadly Campus Bus Crash

Hundreds of Iranian students held protests for a second day on Sunday, calling for university officials to resign over a bus crash that killed 10, state news agency IRNA said.

The demonstrating students reportedly carried photos of victims of Tuesday's crash at a square leading to the university, in a rare display of dissent at Tehran's Islamic Azad University.

They demanded the university's chairman of the board of trustees Ali-Akbar Velayati resign, the sports and youth ministry's news agency Borna reported.

The bus was carrying 30 students along a mountainous road within the university's science and research campus in northwestern Tehran when it veered off the road and hit a concrete column. 

Seven were killed instantly, state TV said, while an updated death toll of 10 was reported by the conservative Tasnim news agency the day after the crash.

The university initially blamed Tuesday's crash on the driver having a stroke, which was later denied by the coroner's office. 

On social media, the public and students have pointed to the university's ageing bus fleet and poor maintenance.

Several mid-tier managers were fired in the wake of the accident and some arrested, the university told semi-official news agency ISNA on Wednesday.

Students have called for the university's bus fleet to be replaced. 

They want an emergency centre to be set up on-campus and for guard rails to be erected along the entire mountainous road where the accident happened.

Iran's prosecutor general Mohammad-Jafar Montazeri visited the protesting students and called for calm.

He promised them he would follow up on the case personally and punish wrongdoers "if they were found guilty."

Iran is the world's seventh deadliest country per capita for road accidents, according to 2013 data—the latest available—published by the World Health Organization.

Efforts to modernize Iran's ageing and highly polluting vehicle fleet have been hampered by a lack of investment.

Foreign companies Peugeot and Renault were forced to withdraw this year due to the return of US sanctions.

Photo Credit: ISNA

Rescue Teams Recover Black Boxes at Site of Iran Plane Crash

Rescue teams have recovered the black boxes of a plane that crashed last month in the mountains of southwestern Iran leaving 66 people dead, official media reported on Sunday.

"The box that recorded flight parameters and the one with conversations in the cockpit have been handed over to judicial authorities," Reza Jafarzadeh, the public relations director of Iran's civil aviation organization, told official news agency IRNA.

Jafarzadeh said the two black boxes of the Aseman Airlines ATR-72 were found on Saturday by rescue teams, who had resumed search operations in the Zagros mountains on Friday after bad weather forced them to halt efforts for nearly a week.

They were to be handed over to investigators seeking to determine the cause of the accident. The aircraft, on a domestic flight out of Tehran, went down in a snowstorm on February 18 and crashed at a height of about 4,000 metres (13,000 feet).

There have been no reported survivors from the plane's 66 passengers and crew. The crash site has been hit by heavy snowfall in recent days, making rescue operations particularly dangerous due to avalanche risks, according to officials quoted by local media.

So far, only body parts have been recovered from the scene of the crash. Forensic teams have performed tests on 51 samples of human tissue in attempts to identify the victims, IRNA reported.

Photo Credit: Tasnim

Iran Grounds Airline's ATR Planes After Crash

Iran's civil aviation organization has grounded ATR planes belonging to Aseman Airlines after one of them crashed this week with 66 people on board, state television reported Friday.

The measure is temporary as authorities investigate the cause of Sunday's accident, which saw an ATR-72 twin-engine plane, in service since 1993, crash in Iran's Zagros mountains.

Aseman, which is banned from flying in the European Union, operates five ATR-72s, according to the company's website. Flight EP3704 disappeared from radar around 45 minutes after taking off from Tehran on a domestic flight. No survivors have been found.

The wreckage of the ATR, which is part-owned by Europe's Airbus, was discovered at a height of around 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) in the Dena range but bad weather has hampered recovery efforts.

Helicopters have been unable to access the site and an operation to bring bodies down the mountain on foot has been suspended until Monday.

The plane's "black box" flight recorders have also not yet been recovered.

Photo Credit: Wikicommons

Iran Teams Carry Plane Crash Dead Down From Mountain

Emergency teams on Wednesday began recovering bodies from a plane crash in Iran's Zagros mountains but the operation had to be suspended due to bad weather, officials said.

Aseman Airlines flight EP3704, carrying 66 people, disappeared from radar on Sunday morning around 45 minutes after taking off from Tehran on a domestic flight. No survivors have been found.

Search helicopters located the crash site after a break in the weather on Tuesday at a height of around 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) in the Dena range.

Helicopters were unable to land but officials said a recovery operation had begun on Wednesday, with emergency personnel carrying bodies on their backs to a road at the foot of the mountain.

The Iranian Red Crescent later said the operation had to be suspended as the bad weather returned, news agency ISNA reported.

It was unclear how many bodies had been recovered. One official reported seven bodies recovered but the Red Crescent said 32 "packages" had been brought down from the mountain and that these were not necessarily entire bodies.

A local rescue official told news agency ILNA that it should be possible to identify most of the remains.

The crash of the ATR-72 twin-engine plane, which had been in service since 1993, reawakened concerns over aviation safety in Iran, which has been exacerbated by international sanctions over the years.

Aseman Airlines was blacklisted by the European Commission in December 2016. It was one of only three airlines barred over safety concerns -- the other 190 being blacklisted due to broader concerns over oversight in their
respective countries.

By Eric Randolph in Tehran

Photo Credit: Morteza Salehi

Hazardous Effort to Recover Bodies From Plane Crash in Iran Mountains

Iranian rescue teams struggled to recover bodies on Tuesday from the wreckage of a plane that crashed in hazardous terrain near a mountain peak two days earlier with 66 people on board.

"Deep and dangerous crevices in the area of the crash have made it impossible for helicopters to land," Ghafoor Rastinrooz, director of the regional medical centre, told official news agency IRNA. "The bodies must be transferred by hand to the foot of the mountain which will be time-consuming," he said.

Aseman Airlines flight EP3704 disappeared from radar as it flew over the Zagros mountain range on Sunday morning, around 45 minutes after taking off from Tehran on a domestic flight.

After two days of heavy snow and fog, the weather finally cleared on Tuesday morning, allowing a helicopter crew to spot a piece of the wreckage with the company's logo.

A pilot told state broadcaster IRIB he had seen "scattered bodies around the plane" and that it was located on one of the Dena mountains at a height of around 4,000 metres (13,000 feet).

Footage from the helicopter showed a glimpse of the wreckage in deep snow on a sheer mountain face, while officials warned that bad weather was due to return in a few hours.

Around 100 mountaineers have been making their way up the mountain since Monday and teams were being choppered to near the crash site. "Helicopters are dropping off the rescue and relief teams in the nearest spot possible, as accessing the site of the crash is very difficult," Ali Abedzadeh, head of the Civil Aviation Organisation, told state TV.

"Only highly professional and trained mountaineers can go there, get close to the plane and bring back the bodies," he said.

Aviation Safety

The ATR-72 twin-engine plane, in service since 1993, flew early Sunday from the capital's Mehrabad airport towards the city of Yasuj, some 500 kilometres (300 miles) to the south.

A team of crash investigators from French air safety agency BEA was due to arrive in Iran later on Tuesday. The incident has reawakened concerns over aviation safety in Iran, which has been exacerbated by international sanctions over the years.

Aseman Airlines was blacklisted by the European Commission in December 2016. It was one of only three airlines barred over safety concerns -- the other 190 being blacklisted due to broader concerns over oversight in their respective countries.

Iran has complained that sanctions imposed by the United States have jeopardised the safety of its airlines and made it difficult to maintain and modernise ageing fleets.

Aseman was forced to ground many of its planes at the height of the sanctions due to difficulties in obtaining spares. In a working paper presented to the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2013, Iran said US sanctions were blocking "the acquisition of parts, services and support essential to aviation safety".

Iran has suffered multiple aviation disasters, most recently in 2014 when 39 people were killed as a Sepahan Airlines plane crashed just after take-off from Tehran, narrowly avoiding many more deaths when it plummeted near a busy market.

But figures from the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based NGO, suggest Iran is nonetheless above-average in implementing ICAO safety standards.

Lifting sanctions on aviation purchases was a key clause in the nuclear deal that Iran signed with world powers in 2015. Following the deal, Aseman Airlines finalised an agreement to buy 30 Boeing 737 MAX jets for $3 billion (2.4 billion euros) last June, with an option to buy 30 more.

The sale could still be scuppered if US President Donald Trump chooses to reimpose sanctions in the coming months, as he has threatened to do.

By Eric Randolph in Tehran

Photo Credit: Ali Khodaei