The crash of a Ukrainian plane in Tehran on Wednesday morning killing all 176 on board hours after a ballistic missile attack in Iraq, has left many experts speculating the true cause of the crash.
Downing street are looking into reports the plane was shot down by a missile and find the reports “very concerning.”
On Thursday Boris Johnson had a call with the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, after which the Johnson’s spokesman said there needs to be “a full credible and transparent investigation in what happened” to the flight.
When the spokesman was asked about reports the crash was caused by a missile, he said, “I’m not going to speculate on this, but reports we have seen are very concerning.”
Experts in air crash investigations are casting doubt over the claim engine failure was to blame or technical failures, as a “shootdown” is the most likely cause.
OPS group who are an aviation risk monitoring group said, “We would recommend the starting assumption to be that this was a shootdown event, similar to MH17, until there is clear evidence to the contrary.”
The OPS group highlighted that photographs of the crash scene shows, “obvious projectile holes in the fuselage and a wing section.”
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council said that they are working on several theories regarding the plane crash, one being it was a missile that bought the plane down.
So far Iran has refused to release the two black boxes to international authorities and Tehran has blamed “technical problems” for the incident raising suspicions.
Ukrainian investigators are in Iran and are still awaiting permission to examine the crash site, which is currently being cleared up by Iranian officials.
Danilov said, “A strike by a missile, possibly a Tor missile system, is among the main [theories], as information has surfaced on the internet about elements of a missile being found near the site of the crash.”
Iran has confirmed that they have both black boxes from the crashed Boeing 737 which contains voice data from the cockpit and details of technical information on the plane.
It has been reported that through the damage to the plane that some of the black boxes’ memory was lost, Iran has refused to allow Boeing access to the black boxes.
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