A Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 had suffered an engine malfunction before it went down a few minutes after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport, an airport official has said.
The engine caught fire when the plane was airborne, Ali Khashani, a senior public relations official at Iran’s major airport, was quoted by local media. The fatal engine failure is thought to have caused the jet to come down, between the cities of Sharhiar and Parand in the early hours of Wednesday.
The airliner, operated by Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), carried 176 passengers and nine crew, most of whom were Iranians, according to Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Iran said later on Wednesday that "any statements regarding the causes of the accident prior to the decision of the [investigative] commission are not official."
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