A Boeing 737 of Ukranian Airlines with 176 passengers on board and bound for Kiev (Ukraine) crashed near Tehran airport in Iran on the morning of Wednesday (local time) without leaving survivors, according to reports from Iranian state television . At first, the state media claimed that a mechanical failure occurred, although Iranian rescue teams have already found the black boxes of the plane, according to the country's civil aviation authorities.
Among the dead were nationals from seven countries, including 63, 82 Iranians, 11 Ukrainians (2 passengers and 9 crew members), 10 Swedes, 4 Afghans, 3 Germans and 3 Britons, Canadians, reported the Ukrainian Foreign Minister , Vadim Pristaiko.
Emergency services arrived in the area shortly after the accident, around 6:20 am local time, including 22 ambulances. However, they could not approach offering first aid due to the intensity of the flames, state television reported.
The international society of the Red Crescent and the Red Cross shared photographs of rescuers in a field near the crash zone where wreckage and debris can be seen.
https://twitter.com/iranian_rcs/status/1214764351854387201?s=21
Airport flight records showed that a Boeing 737-800 flown by Ukraine International Airlines took off Wednesday morning, then stopped sending data almost immediately afterwards, according to the FlightRadar24 website. "We are aware of the media reports leaving Iran and we are gathering more information," Boeing said in a statement.
Hours later, the Ukrainian airline announced that it suspends flights to the Iranian capital: "As of today the company suspends all its flights to Tehran for an indefinite time," says a statement on its Facebook page. "The company is now establishing the definitive number of passengers," the note adds.
The company indicates that the crashed plane was manufactured in 2016 and received by the airline "directly from the construction plant". The last technical inspection of the wrecked aircraft was carried out on January 6, 2020, the company says.
The Security and Defense Council of Ukraine said in another statement that on board PS 752 flight covering the Tehran-Kiev route were 11 citizens of Ukraine, including two passengers and nine crew members.
The company Boeing had announced at the end of the year the suspension of the production of its 737 Max model, its best-selling model, after the ban on flying by the US authorities. A New York Times investigation published Monday warned that Boeing found new safety risks in this model, which was involved in two major fatal plane crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia where 376 people were killed. The company lost 25% of its value on the stock market in the last ten months of 2019.
The most serious plane crash in Iran recently took place in February 2018, when an ATR-72 of the Iranian airline Aseman crashed in a mountainous area of central Iran, killing 59 passengers and the six members of the crew traveling on board.
The incident occurred hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack against two military bases in Iraq that housed US troops, in retaliation for the assassination of General of the Revolutionary Guards Qassem Soleimani.
In response to the escalation of tensions, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to restrict all US civil aircraft flights over Iraq, Iran and the waters of the Persian Gulf.
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