US believes Iran mistakenly shot down Ukrainian airliner: reports

WASHINGTON: A Ukraine airliner that crashed in Iran, killing all 176 people aboard, was most likely brought down accidentally by Iranian air defenses, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

One U.S. official said U.S. satellites had detected the launch of two missiles shortly before the plane crashed, followed by evidence of an explosion. Two officials said Washington believed the downing of the plane was accidental.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

The plane, a Boeing 737-800, went down in the outskirts of Tehran just hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at U.S. forces.

According to an initial report by Iranian investigators, a Ukrainian airliner was on fire immediately before it crashed southwest of Tehran killing all 176 onboard.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said on Thursday its investigators wanted to search the crash site for possible Russian missile debris.

The report by Iran’s civil aviation organisation cited witnesses on the ground and in a passing aircraft flying at high altitude as saying the plane was on fire while still aloft.

The three-year-old airliner, which had its last scheduled maintenance on Monday, encountered a technical problem shortly after take-off and started to head toward a nearby airport before it crashed, the report said.

The technical problem was not specified in the report, which also said that there was no radio communication from the pilot and that the aircraft disappeared from radar at 8,000 feet.

A Canadian security source told Reuters there was evidence one of the engines had overheated.

The crash happened hours after Iran launched missile attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq, leading some to speculate that the plane may have been hit.

The initial assessment of Western intelligence agencies was that the plane had suffered a technical malfunction and had not been brought down by a missile, five security sources – three Americans, one European and the Canadian – who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Ukraine Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danylov said the country’s investigators wanted to search for possible Russian missile debris after seeing information about it on the internet.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran have risen with the United States’ killing of a top Iranian general on Friday and Tehran retaliated with a missile strike on U.S. targets in Iraq.