A Ukrainian commercial airliner crashed on January 8 soon after taking off from Iran’s capital, Tehran, killing all 176 people on board, mostly Iranian nationals, but also Western and Ukrainian citizens.
On January 9, unidentified U.S. officials said they were confident that Iranian air defense systems accidentally downed the Boeing 737-800, based on satellite, radar and electronic data. Newsweek quoted a Pentagon and a senior U.S. intelligence official, as well as an Iraqi intelligence official, as saying they believed the Ukrainian plane was hit by a Russian-made Tor missile.
Debris and smoldering parts from the aircraft belonging to Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) were strewn across a field southwest of the Iranian capital’s Imam Khomeini International Airport as rescue teams with face masks retrieved bodies.