A Ukrainian plane with 176 people on board crashed on Wednesday morning outside Tehran, the Iranian capital, just minutes after taking off to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. There were no survivors .
In the device, a Boeing 737-800 , only three and a half years old, flew citizens of seven countries: Iran (82), Canada (63), Ukraine (11), Sweden (10), Afghanistan (4), Germany (3) and United Kingdom (3).
This flight is usually by Iranian-Canadian citizens heading to Toronto (Canada) to stop in Kiev, and Iranian students back to their studies in Ukraine after the December holidays, according to the news agency The Associated Press.
" Our priority is to know the truth and who were to blame for this tragedy," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
" We are shocked and saddened, " said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has promised to monitor so that what happened is "thoroughly investigated, and the questions of Canadians receive an answer."
Just yesterday, the main airlines had diverted their routes to avoid the Middle East as far as possible, for fear of the military crisis between the United States and Iran. The US Air Administration prohibited the airlines of this country from flying over an area of the Persian Gulf for fear of " the possibility of miscalculation or identification ."
The Ukrainian plane had taken off at 6:12 in the morning (local time), with a delay of one hour from Imam Khomeini International Airport, and crashed minutes after taking off, without having reached 8,000 feet .
It was full of fuel for a 1,430-mile trip, so it burst into flames as it rushed ashore near Shahedshahr Township.
The Iranian Ministry of Transportation has explained that it suffered a fire in an engine and the pilot lost control . The Iranian team investigating the incident says the commander did not communicate with the air traffic controllers. The authorities of that country have blamed what happened to a mechanical failure.
" The only thing the pilot could do is to direct the plane to a nearby soccer field avoiding a residential area," a witness, Aref Geravand, told the news agency. "The field crashed near, in a water channel," he added.
"It was one of our best planes," said the Ukrainian airline, "given the experience of the crew, the probability of error is minimal , we do not even consider that possibility."
Boeing 737-800 aircraft have suffered several fatal accidents in recent years, including one in Russia in 2016 with 62 victims and another in India in 2010 with more than 150. Last year they underwent inspections and repairs after reported cracks in their wings
It is in any case a different model to the Boeing 737 MAX , which was temporarily removed worldwide after two fatal accidents within five months with 346 fatalities.
Iranian air authorities have found the two black boxes that registered the last moments of the plane, but have refused to deliver them to the black boxes to Boeing, which is an American company. International law gives the country where the incident occurs the authority to lead the investigation.
Experts cited in the media have speculated on other possible reasons for this incident, beyond a technical failure: the PAHO group, which monitors the risk for civil aviation, has suggested that it could be an attack such as the one suffered by the flight of Malaysian airlines shot down by a missile in 2014 in Ukraine; 283 people died in an incident attributed to pro-Russian forces.
A video broadcast in the media seems to pick up the moment of the accident, although the recording has not been verified yet. An expert quoted by The Washington Post says the plane seemed to break before falling to the ground.
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