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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Nicola Slawson (now), and Damien Gayle (earlier)

Iran's admission it shot down airliner is 'important first step', says Boris Johnson – as it happened

Summary

We are closing this liveblog now. Here’s a summary of what has happened today and you can read the latest story from our Turkey and Middle East correspondent Bethan McKernan here.

  • Iran has admitted that its military unintentionally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner as it flew from its capital, killing all 176 people onboard, after days of rejecting western intelligence claims that it had been hit by an Iranian surface to air missile.
  • Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, tweeted his apologies for circulating misleading statements.
  • Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has demanded that Iran punish those responsible for the downing of the airliner, as well as pay compensation and apologise.
  • Iran’s Revolutionary Guards accepted responsibility for shooting down UIA 752.
  • Boris Johnson has called Iran’s admission it shot down a passenger plane by mistake an “important first step”.

Catch up on news and analysis of the disaster:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani promised further investigation into the downing of an Ukrainian passenger plane during a phone conversation with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday, state news agency IRNA reported.

“Iran welcomes any international cooperation in the framework of international regulations to shed more light on the incident,” Rouhani said, promising further investigation into the crash that Tehran said was caused by its air defences “unintentionally”.

Iran and Canada cut diplomatic ties in 2012.

In related news, German chancellor Angela Merkel repeated a call for all parties to respect the Iranian nuclear accord, despite Iran’s decision to intensify its enrichment of uranium and moves by the United States to impose economic sanctions, PA reports.

Under a deal brokered in 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, to restrict its nuclear program.

Merkel said:

“We agreed that we should do anything to preserve the deal, the JCPOA. Germany is convinced that Iran should not acquire or have nuclear weapons,” Merkel said during a joint press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday.

“For this reason we will continue to employ all diplomatic means to keep this agreement alive, which is certainly not perfect but it is an agreement and it comprises commitments by all sides.”

Unlike the US, which on Friday imposed new economic sanctions on Iran, the Europeans have given Tehran more time to avoid nuclear proliferation rather than begin a process that could lead to a reimposition of UN sanctions.

Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau is due to speak shortly, his third press conference since the plane was shot down on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, Canadian officials have expressed frustration over an inability to access the crash site— despite an invitation from Iranian officials to do so.

François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s foreign minister, told reporters Friday evening that only two of the 10 members of the delegation had been granted visas for travel to Iran while they waited in Turkey.

Two officials from Canada’s transportation safety board are also waiting for proper documentation.

In Canada, there have been calls from the Iranian Canadian community for those responsible for downing the aircraft to be held accountable.

Payman Parseyan, former president of the Iranian Heritage Society of Edmonton, has tweeted an emotional statement following Iran’s admission it brought down the plane.

He said: “There are no winners in this story and only communities left devastated. Iran’s government has yet to be held accountable and answer for this tragedy that took the lives of some [of] our brightest, our friends, neighbours and fellow Canadian[s].”

Meanwhile the Iranian Canadian congress said in a statement following the news, reiterating calls for a thorough investigation.

“Those who have committed this crime of shooting down a passenger airplane and those who have been responsible in releasing false information must be held accountable.

“The families of the victims of this horrible tragedy must be supported in any way deemed appropriate and desired by the families, including through restitution.”

Reuters is reporting that Iran’s Fars news agency has published a report on the protests in Tehran, which have sprung up following the admission that the passenger plane was shot down. This is unusual as the agency, which is widely seen as close to the the powerful Revolutionary Guards, rarely reports on anti-government unrest.

The report said protesters were chanting slogans against the nation’s top authorities and that demonstrators on the street had also ripped up pictures of Qassem Soleimani, the prominent commander of the Guard’s Quds Force who was killed in a US drone strike.

The agency carried pictures of the gathering and a torn banner of Soleimani. It said the protesters numbered about 700 to 1,000 people.

Iran’s civil aviation authority has said that Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752 did not veer off its normal course before an anti-aircraft battery launched a missile at it.

The latest admission over the downing of the flight with the loss of 176 passengers comes after UIA’s president and vice-president reacted angrily to what they saw as hints by the Iranian authorities that their crew was in some way to blame for the incident.

Protesters in Tehran are demanding the resignation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a Reuters report that offers some context to the footage in tweets embedded in an earlier post.

“Commander-in-chief [Khamenei] resign, resign,” the videos showed hundreds of people chanting in front of Tehran’s Amirkabir University.

Reuters said it could not verify the authenticity of the video footage.

Updated

The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office has said it is investigating possible wilfil killing and aircraft destruction in its probe of the crash of a Ukrainian airliner in Iran, Reuters reports.

Updated

As Iranians protest over their government’s mishandling of the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, in London Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has addressed hundreds marching against the prospect of war with Iran.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which co-organised the demonstration with the Stop the War Coalition, is carrying photos of the protest on its Twitter feed.

Updated

Following on from the previous report about domestic reaction to the Iranian mea culpa, reports are emerging on Twitter of protests in the street in Tehran over the government’s handling of the fiasco.

Reuters has some domestic Iranian reaction to Iranian government admitting its forces shot down the Ukrainian airliner just outside of Tehran, with many in the country angry at what appears to be incompetence and dishonesty by their leaders.

Expressions of condolence over the incident from Supreme Leader and President Hassan Rouhani failed to calm angry Iranians, who used social media to express their outrage against the establishment for concealing the truth.

“It is a national tragedy. The way it was handled and it was announced by the authorities was even more tragic,” said Ali Ansari, a moderate cleric, according to Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency.

Many Iranians asked why authorities did not close down Tehran’s airport and the country’s airspace at a time when they would have been on alert for retaliation after the missile strikes.

There were no fatalities in those strikes, launched to avenge the US killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.

“They were so careful not to kill any American in their revenge for Soleimani. But they did not close the airport? This shows how much this regime cares for Iranians,” said Mira Sedaghati in Tehran by telephone.

An Iranian military statement carried by state media said the Ukrainian plane, which was headed for Kiev, was mistaken for a “hostile target” after it turned toward a sensitive military base of the elite Revolutionary Guards near Tehran, adding that it was a “human error and unintentional”.

“Unintentionally? What does it mean? They concealed this huge tragic news for days just to mourn for Soleimani. Shame on you,” said Reza Ghadyani, in Tabriz city.

The country held three days of funeral processions for Soleimani, who was head of the Revolutionary Guards’ overseas Quds Force and a national hero. Hundreds of thousands of people participated across the country.

Some Iranians called for resignation of officials, dismissing their apologies.

“You took your revenge from Iranians,” tweeted Ahmad Batebi on his @radiojibi Twitter account, in response to Rouhani’s tweet saying that “The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake”.

“Only resignation,” tweeted Sadeq on his @sadeq1367 account

In a Twitter message on Saturday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif cast some of the blame for the plane disaster on what he called U.S. adventurism.

“It’s the end line Mr. Minister! You ruined everything!,” responded Bita Razaqi on @bitarazaqi.

Updated

Boris Johnson: Iranian admission is 'important first step'

Boris Johnson has called Iran’s admission it shot down a passenger plane by mistake an “important first step” and said it “reinforces the importance of de-escalating tensions in the region”.

In a statement, the prime minister said:

Iran’s admission that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down by mistake by its own armed forces is an important first step.

This will be an incredibly difficult time for all those families who lost loved ones in such tragic circumstances. We will do everything we can to support the families of the four British victims and ensure they get the answers and closure they deserve.

We now need a comprehensive, transparent and independent international investigation and the repatriation of those who died. The UK will work closely with Canada, Ukraine and our other international partners affected by this accident to ensure this happens.

This tragic accident only reinforces the importance of de-escalating tensions in the region. We can all see very clearly that further conflict will only lead to more loss and tragedy. It is vital that all leaders now pursue a diplomatic way forward.

Updated

A video is circulating on Twitter that purports to show the moment that the surface to air missile that downed UIA flight 752 was launched by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Reuters is now running more detail on the comments by Ukraine International Airlines’ president and vice-president at the press conference they took earlier this afternoon, where they denied suggestions that their crew were in some way responsible for the downing of the jet.

Ukraine International Airlines said on Saturday that its plane that crashed in Iran this week had received no warning from Tehran airport about a possible threat to its safety before it took off en route for Kiev.

At a briefing by its president and vice-president, the airline also denied the aircraft veered off its normal course after an Iranian military statement said the plane flew close to a sensitive military site of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

The airline officials bristled at what they said were hints from Iran that the crew had not acted properly.

Iran said earlier that its military mistakenly shot down the plane, saying air defences were fired in error while on high alert in the tense aftermath of Iranian missile strikes on US targets in Iraq. All 176 people onboard were killed.

The airline officials called on Iran to take full responsibility for the crash and said the Iranian authorities should have closed the airport.

“If you play at war, you play as much as you want, but there are normal people around who you had to protect,” Vice-president Ihor Sosnovsky said.

“If they are shooting from somewhere to somewhere, they were obliged to close the airport. Obliged. And then shoot as much as you want.”

He added that the plane had turned 15 degrees to the right after it had reached 6,000 feet, in accordance with the instructions of the airport dispatcher.

Yevhenii Dykhne, the president and chief executive of the airline, made an emotional opening statement to reporters saying the airline had not done anything wrong in terms of following security procedures.

“At the time of departure from ([Kyiv’s] Boryspil airport, the airline had no information about possible threats,” he said. “At the time of departure from Tehran airport, it was exactly the same.”

The airline said Tehran airport was operating normally at the time its aircraft took off. Asked why there had been a delay in take-off, Dykhne said the captain had decided to offload some luggage because the plane was too heavily loaded.

Updated

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has spoken to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, about the investigation into the downing of the aircraft, a statement from the Ukrainian president’s office said.

The presidents have agreed to ask French specialists to decode the plane’s black box. Macron said the formal procedure to launch the international investigation had been started and he would visit Kiev.

Updated

The relatively quick admission by Iran that Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 was shot down by mistake has drawn comparisons with how Russia handled the MH17 case.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014. Russia has always denied it played any role in the tragedy, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Nick Waters, an investigator for Bellingcat, an independent investigative website that has been investigating the MH17 crash, has tweeted to say it had been preparing for a similar scenario to play out again with Iran denying involvement.

Updated

Protesters were due to be gathering outside the BBC’s London HQ at midday to demonstrate against war with Iran, even as attention is deflected for the time being on to the issue of Iran’s accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner.

The demonstration, organised by the ever-busy Stop the War Coalition, starts outside BBC Broadcasting House and will march to Trafalgar Square where speakers will address the rally.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, are among the prominent figures expected to join the demo, along with the musician Brian Eno and the standup comic Tez Ilyas.

In a statement sent out ahead of the demonstration, Kate Hudson, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said:

US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the re-imposition of crippling sanctions on the Iranian economy and the US extra-judicial killing in a sovereign state are all steps to war.

The danger of war remains high and the prime minister must exert every influence to ensure a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

Unless the sanctions are lifted, war and nuclear proliferation are a real threat. Britain must do more to alleviate the sanctions and push to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.

Updated

The chief of Ukrainian International Airlines, Evgeniy Dikhne, has rejected claims by Iran that the shooting down of its airliner was in some way prompted by a mistake by his crew.

Speaking at a press conference arranged before Iran’s surprise admission of responsibility for shooting down UIA flight 752, Dikhne stressed that his company had received no indication from Iranian or international civil aviation authorities that it would be unsafe to fly over the country. He added:

Currently, even within the statement by Iran there was a hint saying that our crew has been doing something independently or has been doing something not in the way that they have have been behaving.

The vice-president of UIA, Igor Sosnovskiy, continued, saying that Tehran airport had been fully open and operational, despite the tensions between Iran and the US. He spoke of the competency of the crew, who had clocked up thousands of hours of flight time.

Iran should have closed the airport, Sosnovskiy said, and having failed to do so the country must take full responsibility for the downing of the jet and the lives lost.

Updated

A thread here by Reza Khaasteh, a journalist with Iran Front Page news, translates in more detail the statements by the Revolutionary Guards’ Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh in a press conference in which he admits his unit’s responsibility for shooting down UIA 752.

Updated

Revolutionary Guards unit accepts blame for shooting down jet

The head of the aerospace division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has said he “wishes he could die”, as his unit accepted responsibility for shooting down UIA 752.

“I wish I could die and not witness such an accident,” Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh said in a video posted online by Iranian state TV on Saturday.

A file photo of General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division
A file photo of Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

According to translations by Reuters, Hajizadeh says he told authorities on Wednesday about the unintentional missile attack, and that the plane was brought down by a short-range missile.

He says he partly blames the attack on the US, for its assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani on Iraqi soil last week, which heightened tensions in the region and led to a tit-for-tat strike by Iran on US bases.

Updated

The former government minister Alistair Burt has commented on the Iranian ambassador’s tweeted apology, saying it is unprecedented and that he has never seen such comments from anyone in that capacity.

Burt is one of many on Twitter saying that Hamid Baeidinejad’s admission of guilt is very unusual in a world where issuing denials even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, is usually how states operate.

Updated


In a statement issued by Justin Trudeau’s office after Iran acknowledged the plane was brought down by its own armed forces, the Canadian prime minister said:

Our focus remains closure, accountability, transparency, and justice for the families and loved ones of the victims. This is a national tragedy, and all Canadians are mourning together.

We will continue working with our partners around the world to ensure a complete and thorough investigation, and the Canadian government expects full cooperation from Iranian authorities.

Updated

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has joined calls for an investigation into the downing of UIA 752, as well as offering his condolences to the relatives of victims.

Khamenei on Saturday expressed his deep sympathy to the families of the 176 victims, and called on the armed forces to “pursue probable shortcomings and guilt in the painful incident”, according to the Associated Press.

Reuters earlier reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who answer directly to Khamenei, have said they will offer their own explanation and apology for the incident.

Updated

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has made his first comments on the Iranian admission of guilt today.

He says the Canadian government expects “full cooperation from Iranian authorities” and that its officials “will continue working with our partners around the world to ensure a complete and thorough investigation”.

Updated

Credit for Iran’s decision to apologise over the shooting down of UIA flight 752 should be given to the investigative news website Bellingcat, suggests Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP for Tonbridge and Malling.

Of course, Bellingcat was far from the only organisation reporting that the downing of the airliner was the result of an Iranian missile strike. But its impressive geolocation work cannot have hurt in pinning down the truth.

Updated

Ukrainian president calls for compensation and apology

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has demanded that Iran punish those responsible for the downing of the airliner, as well as pay compensation and apologise.

“We expect Iran ... to bring the guilty to the courts,” Zelenskiy wrote on Facebook, calling also for the return of remains, according to comments translated and reported by AFP.

“We hope the inquiry will be pursued without deliberate delay and without obstruction,” Zelenskiy added.

He said he wanted “total access” to the full inquiry for 45 Ukrainian experts, and in a tweet also sought an official apology.

Updated

Our writers Luke Harding and Peter Beaumont have written the story of the final moments of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752.

The plane would have appeared on the radar screen of Iran’s Mehrabad air traffic control centre, which cleared the crew to ascend to 26,000ft. Staff should have identified the Boeing 737-800 plane as a regular civilian jet.

Also tracking the skies over Tehran were American satellites. If further missiles were hurled at US targets in Iraq the US’s Space-Based Infrared System would immediately detect them.

At 6.15am the system picked up something ominous: the unmistakable heat signature of missiles freshly launched.

An Iranian garrison on the ground, due west of the airport, appears to have mistaken the plane for a hostile American object. According to US officials, an Iranian anti-aircraft battery unleashed two Russian-made missiles. The US satellites recorded an infrared blip: an explosion.

The results were immediate and catastrophic.

Read more:

Updated

Iran's ambassador apologises for "conveying wrong findings"

A lot of U-turns on Twitter this morning. Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, has tweeted his apologies for circulating misleading statements.

Updated

Ivan Bakanov, head of Ukraine’s state security service
Ivan Bakanov, head of Ukraine’s state security service Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA

The head of the Ukrainian state security service (SBU) says Iran’s statement confirms one of his organisation’s working theories about what caused the crash.

Contrary to what some experts had said initially, the SBU thought Iran’s anti-aircraft missile system had been operated manually rather than automatically, Ivan Bakanov said, according to Reuters.

Bakanov’s statement came as the head of the airline operating the plane said he had been sure that it was not his staff who were at fault.

We did not for a second doubt that our crew and our plane could have been the cause of this terrible, awful air catastrophe, Evgeniy Dikhne said on Facebook. “They were our best guys and girls. The best.”

Updated

Iran has admitted that its military unintentionally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner as it flew from its capital, killing all 176 people onboard, after days of rejecting western intelligence claims that it had been hit by an Iranian surface to air missile.

A military statement early on Saturday via state TV blamed “human error” for the downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 on Wednesday. It was followed by an apology from Iran’s president.

The downing of the airliner came in the midst of rising tensions between Iran and the US. Iran had just launched reciprocal rocket attacks on US bases in the Middle East after Trump ordered the assassination one of Iran’s top military leaders with a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

Updated

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