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Iran admits it fired two missiles at Ukrainian passenger jet
Source: The Guardian
Iran admits it fired two missiles at Ukrainian passenger jet
Tehran issues first acknowledgement of precise number of rounds fired at plane
Michael Safi
@safimichael
Tue 21 Jan 2020 16.16 GMT
Last modified on Tue 21 Jan 2020 16.55 GMT
Iran says its armed forces mistakenly launched two surface-to-air missiles at a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed with 176 people onboard earlier this month, its first acknowledgement of the precise number of rounds fired at the airliner.
Assessments by western intelligence agencies and video footage from the launch site had pointed to two missiles being fired at the Boeing 737-800 on the morning of 8 January, but Iranian officials had so far referenced only one until the release of preliminary report on Tuesday by the country’s civil aviation authority.
The black boxes recovered from the aircraft were still to be examined and could remain so for the time being, the report said. Iranian flight-crash investigators lacked the technology to download data from the aircraft’s black boxes and had asked the US National Transportation Safety Board and its French counterpart for assistance, but neither had “so far responded positively”, it said.
“If devices are provided, the information [on the boxes] can be restored and retrieved in a short period of time,” the report said.
Ukraine has made repeated requests for Iran to send the black boxes to Kyiv for analysis, which an Iranian aviation official was quoted agreeing to do on Saturday, before contradicting himself in remarks carried by state-run media outlets two days later. Canada, which lost 57 citizens onboard the flight, has called for France to handle the investigation.
-snip-
Tehran issues first acknowledgement of precise number of rounds fired at plane
Michael Safi
@safimichael
Tue 21 Jan 2020 16.16 GMT
Last modified on Tue 21 Jan 2020 16.55 GMT
Iran says its armed forces mistakenly launched two surface-to-air missiles at a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed with 176 people onboard earlier this month, its first acknowledgement of the precise number of rounds fired at the airliner.
Assessments by western intelligence agencies and video footage from the launch site had pointed to two missiles being fired at the Boeing 737-800 on the morning of 8 January, but Iranian officials had so far referenced only one until the release of preliminary report on Tuesday by the country’s civil aviation authority.
The black boxes recovered from the aircraft were still to be examined and could remain so for the time being, the report said. Iranian flight-crash investigators lacked the technology to download data from the aircraft’s black boxes and had asked the US National Transportation Safety Board and its French counterpart for assistance, but neither had “so far responded positively”, it said.
“If devices are provided, the information [on the boxes] can be restored and retrieved in a short period of time,” the report said.
Ukraine has made repeated requests for Iran to send the black boxes to Kyiv for analysis, which an Iranian aviation official was quoted agreeing to do on Saturday, before contradicting himself in remarks carried by state-run media outlets two days later. Canada, which lost 57 citizens onboard the flight, has called for France to handle the investigation.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/21/iran-admits-it-fired-two-missiles-at-ukrainian-passenger-jet
