Leit_Wolf/iStock(LONDON) — Iran’s judiciary spokesman on Tuesday announced the arrests of an unspecified number of suspects in connection with the accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger jet that killed all 176 people on board shortly after takeoff from Tehran last week.
“Extensive investigations have taken place and some individuals are arrested,” the spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, said in remarks carried by Iran’s official state-run news agency, IRNA.
Further information was not immediately available.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed near Tehran last Wednesday, just hours after the Iranian military fired multiple ballistic missiles into neighboring Iraq, targeting military bases housing American troops, in retaliation for the U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful general.
In a statement carried by state media on Saturday, Iran admitted that its military had “unintentionally hit” the jetliner with an anti-aircraft missile, adding that the plane was mistaken for a “hostile flight” after it turned toward a “sensitive military center.”
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