[국제]Iranian military authorities “mistake down last year’s Ukrainian airliner”

An investigation found that the cause of the accident of a Ukrainian airliner, which was shot down in the air near Tehran in January last year, was due to a mistake by Iranian military authorities.

According to Al Jazeera, the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization said in a report that a Ukrainian air defense officer accidentally recognized the aircraft as an enemy and fired two missiles. However, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleva criticized the report as an attempt to conceal the real cause of the accident.

“The report is nothing more than a cynical attempt by Iranian authorities to hide the true cause of the plane crash. We will not allow Iran to conceal the truth and will prevent it from avoiding responsibility.” Wrote.

Canada also added to criticism, saying it was “an incomplete report.” Canadian Foreign Minister Mark Garner said in a statement that “Iran did not try to answer critical questions about what really happened. The report is incomplete and has no definite facts or evidence.”

On January 8, 2020, Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752 crashed shortly after taking off from Iran’s Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport. The accident killed all 176 passengers and crew on the plane. There were 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians and 10 Swedish people on board.

At that time, the war between Iran and the United States was heightening. On January 7, last year, U.S. forces attacked the Kuds Army of the Iranian army’s real Gasem Soleimani revolutionary garrison in Baghdad, Iraq. Five days later, Iran launched a ballistic missile at an Iraqi military base stationed by US troops in retaliation. And at 6:12 am on the same day, a Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 airliner crashed and exploded three minutes after taking off from Tehran International Airport.

Iran denied the possibility of shooting down the missile, alleging a defect in the aircraft at the beginning of the accident. The authorities tried to destroy the evidence, such as overturning the scene of the accident, but eventually admitted to the fact that the shot was shot down as evidence such as a shot down video came out. The Iranian government declared that the shootdown was a “horrible mistake” by an overly tense force in the confrontation with the United States.

YTN PLUS Jeong Yoon-joo
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