Ukraine yesterday demanded that Iran punish those guilty for the downing of a Ukrainian airliner and compensate those affected, while praising Tehran for cooperating with the “objective” investigation.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy was due to discuss the incident with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani after press time last night, Zelenskiy’s press office said.
“We expect Iran ... to bring the guilty to the courts,” Zelenskiy wrote on Facebook, calling also for the “payment of compensation” and the return of remains.
Tehran yesterday admitted that it accidentally downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Wednesday, killing all 176 people onboard, shortly after launching missiles at bases hosting US forces in Iraq.
Rouhani said Tehran “deeply regrets this disastrous mistake.”
Tehran has invited the US, Ukraine, Canada and others to join the crash investigation.
Kiev said that Iran had cooperated with its experts and it expects an objective probe.
Tehran has handed Ukrainian experts enough data including “all the photos, videos and other materials” to show that the investigation “will be carried out objectively and promptly,” Zelenskiy’s office said.
“The political part of the work is finished,” it said.
It published photographs of experts examining the scene and close-ups of holes in the fuselage and shrapnel damage.
Ukraine on Friday said its experts dispatched to Iran had been granted access to the flight’s black boxes, debris from the plane, the crash site and to recordings of conversations between the pilot and the airport control tower.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, which is coordinating the probe, told reporters that Kiev did not yet have evidence on where the missile was produced, only that it was “launched from Iranian soil.”
Zelenskiy earlier said that Ukraine hoped the inquiry would be pursued “without deliberate delay and without obstruction.”
He urged “total access” to the full inquiry for the 45 Ukrainian experts, and in a tweet also sought an “official apology.”
Ukraine International Airlines chief executive Yevhenii Dykhne said at a news conference in Kiev yesterday that Tehran should have closed the airport due to the escalation of tensions in the region following the US’ killing of a top Iranian general.
“It’s absolutely irresponsible... If you’re playing at war, they were obliged to close the airport,” Dykhne said.
He wrote on Facebook that the Ukrainian crew and the aircraft “were the best.”
In Tehran, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander yesterday said that the missile operator who shot down the passenger jet opened fire independently because of communications “jamming.”
The operator had mistaken the Boeing 737-800 for a “cruise missile” and only had 10 seconds to decide whether to open fire, Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, the guards’ aerospace commander, said in televised remarks.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in