The crash in Iran of a Boeing 737 of the company Ukraine Airlines International would be due to an accidental launch of an Iranian anti-aircraft missile, according to the Canadian and British Prime Ministers, a thesis firmly denied by Tehran.
The disaster, which killed 176 people, mostly Iranians and Canadians, took place shortly after the plane took off from Tehran International Airport, a few hours after several Iranian missiles were fired targeting two bases housing American soldiers in Iraq, in reaction to the death of Iranian general Soleimani a few days earlier in an American strike.
Many images difficult to authenticate circulate on the canvas in support of the thesis advanced by Ottawa and London. A video of about twenty seconds, which would show the moment when a missile hits the device, has been widely disseminated on social networks.
In the images, we can see a luminous object rapidly climbing towards the sky and striking what appears to be an airplane. According to the New York Times, the author of the video started filming after hearing an initial explosion.
On social networks are also relayed photos of fragments of a Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile (SA-15 Gauntlet for NATO), a Russian-made mobile air defense system designed to combat low-flying aircraft. altitude, helicopters or drones.
Tehran bought 29 Tor-M1 systems from Moscow in the 2000s.
The fact that the plane did not explode is not contradictory to a missile launch, note several specialists. “At this altitude, the aircraft is not yet pressurized, there may be holes in the cabin without exploding. What causes the explosion is pressurization, "said a French missile expert. "When it detects being close to a metallic mass, the missile triggers the explosion which leaves perpendicular to the missile", he continues by recalling that the charge, of ten kilos, is made up "partly of explosive and the rest of the grapeshot. "
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If the plane was indeed the victim of a missile launch, part of its fuselage must have been pockmarked with fragments of steel, just like the cabin of the Malaysian Airlines aircraft was shot down by a missile in 2014 above the separatist east of Ukraine. The crash of flight MH17 left 298 dead.