Tehran: The crew of a Ukrainian jetliner that crashed in Iran, killing 176 people, never made a radio call for help and were trying to turn back for the airport when their burning plane went down, an initial Iranian report said on Thursday.
Ukraine, meanwhile, said it considered a missile strike or terrorism as possible theories for the crash, despite Iran's denials.
The Iranian report suggests a sudden emergency struck the Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines early Wednesday morning, when it crashed, just minutes after taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. Investigators from Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation offered no immediate explanation for the disaster. Iranian officials initially blamed a technical malfunction for the crash, something initially backed by Ukrainian officials before they said they wouldn't speculate amid an ongoing investigation.
The crash came just a few hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack against Iraqi military bases housing US troops amid a confrontation with Washington over it killing an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general in a drone strike last week.
The Ukrainian International Airlines took off at 6:12 am on Wednesday, after nearly an hour's delay at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport, the main airport for travellers in Iran. It gained altitude heading west, reaching nearly 8,000 feet, according to both the report and flight-tracking data.
Then something went wrong, though "no radio messages were received from the pilot regarding unusual situations", the report said. In emergencies, pilots typically immediately contact air-traffic controllers. Eyewitnesses, including the crew of another flight passing above it, described seeing the plane engulfed in flames before crashing at 6:18 am.
The crash caused a massive explosion when the plane hit the ground, likely because the aircraft had been fully loaded with fuel for the flight to
Keiv.
The report also confirmed that both of the so-called "black boxes" that contain data and cockpit communications from the plane had been recovered, though they sustained damage and some parts of their
memory was lost. It also said investigators have initially ruled out laser or electromagnetic interference as causing the crash.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, told Ukrainian media that officials had several working theories regarding the crash, including a missile
strike.