In a written statement, the top military authority said as a result of a “human error”, the plane was accidentally shot down by the air defense system while it was passing over a “sensitive military point”.<\/p>\n
Iran was on the alert to possible the U.S. threats to attack on many points in Iran after launching a dozen ballistic missiles targeting the U.S. troops in Iraq, it noted.<\/p>\n
Under these sensitive and crisis conditions, the plane approached a delicate military center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and its height and stance seemed to be hostile, it said.<\/p>\n
The plane in question was unintentionally targeted under these conditions, it added.<\/p>\n
“Armed Forces\u2019 internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people,” President Hassan Rouhani said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
“The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake. My thoughts and prayers go to all the mourning families. I offer my sincerest condolences,” Rouhani said.<\/p>\n
“Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.<\/p>\n
“Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster,” he said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
The Fars News Agency said Friday the cause of the crash would be announced after a meeting of accident investigators, including experts from Iran and abroad.<\/p>\n
The U.S., Britain, and Canada said Thursday they had evidence suggesting an Iranian surface-to-air missile shot down the Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet.<\/p>\n
The Boeing 737-800 crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran\u2019s Imam Khomeini International Airport just hours after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles targeting the U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC\u2019s Quds Force, outside Baghdad International Airport in a drone strike.<\/p>\n
The fatalities include Iranians, Canadians, Ukrainians, Swedes, Afghans, Germans and British citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran\u2019s General Staff of the Armed Forces said Saturday that a Ukrainian aircraft was \u201caccidentally\u201d hit by an Iranian missile early this week that killed 176 people on board. In a written statement, the top military authority said as a result of a “human error”, the plane was accidentally shot down by the air defense …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,30,80,63,17,1,118,37],"tags":[78506,13552,65264],"class_list":["post-64701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-asia","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-hot","category-middle-east","tag-canadia","tag-iranian","tag-ukranian-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}