Iran plane crash: Ukraine’s president calls on US and allies to share evidence

Canada is ‘paying for past decisions’ – namely a decision by Canada’s previous Conservative administration to sever ties with Tehran and upheld by Justin Trudeau’s government – asserts a piece in the Toronto Star.

Like other news outlets in Canada, which was the end destination of 138 people on the Ukraine International Airlines flight, the Star leads with developments including the news that Canada’s federal transportation safety agency has accepted an invitation from Iran to send officials to the site.

But the newspaper adds that without an official relationship, Canada must rely on Italy to secure applications and co-ordinate diplomacy with Tehran.

The perception that the threat of war in the middle east has receded caused oil to slip towards $65 a barrel today as investors also focused on rising US inventories.

Crude is now below where it was before a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian general Qassem Suleimani on January 3.

French experts to play role in crash investigation

France’s BEA air accident agency has said it would be involved in the investigation into a Ukrainian airliner crash in Iran.

“We have been notified of the event by Iran and we have designated an accredited representative to the safety investigation,” a BEA spokesman said.

“No further assistance has been requested at this point in time”, he added.

Airstrikes by unidentified planes on Syrian targets

Airstrikes carried out by unidentified planes in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor overnight killed at least eight members of an Iranian-backed militia, according to monitors.

Several planes targeted positions belonging to the Iraqi Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary group in Bukamal, near the border with Iraq, in the early hours of Friday, both local media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The attack, which occurs against the backdrop of soaring tensions across the region between the US and Iran, was most likely carried out by Israel, Iraqi officials said, without offering evidence.

Israel regularly carries out airstrikes inside Syria targeting Iranian assets but does not normally comment on its military activity in the neighbouring nine-year-old civil war.

The same area was also targeted by the US on 29 December in strikes which killed 25 members of a pro-Iran Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah in retaliation for a rocket attack on a military base in Iraq that killed a US military contractor as tensions escalated between Washington and Tehran over the last two weeks.

Weapons depots and vehicles were targeted, causing several huge explosions, the UK-based Observatory said. Deir Ezzor 24 and Sound and Pictures, activist collectives in the area, also said the planes had struck trucks carrying weapons and depots for ballistic missiles near the town.

The area struck Friday is a key land corridor for Tehran that links Iran across Iraq and Syria through Lebanon.

Iran continues to deny the assessments of western intelligence agencies that its force shot down the Ukrainian passenger jet in the tense early hours on Wednesday morning.

Ali Abedzadeh, the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation, said overnight: “At the time this plane was in the air, there were several other internal and international flights flying at 8000 feet and the suggestion it was targeted by a missile cannot be correct.”

Flight records show there was some domestic traffic around the same time at the Mehrabad Airport, about 35km north-east of Imam Khomeini International airport.

Flight records available online show there were no other flights landing or taking off from Imam Khomeini International airport around the same as the Ukrainian plane was in flight.

Hassan Rezaeifar, the head of the committee that oversees aviation accidents in Iran, said “nowhere in the world” would it be possible to determine the cause of a crash this soon. “Not only haven’t we found evidence to prove the claim [of a missile strike] but we’ve found evidence to reject it,” he said, likely referring to claims by Iranian investigators that the Ukrainian flight attempted to turn around and return to the airport before it went down.

He said he was open to international involvement in the probe, including American, but added – likely in reference to sanctions that prevent US involvement with Iran – that they “should get the authority from their Senate”.

The terrible human tragedy at the centre of the incident is laid bare in reports which are detailing how the flight was carrying entire families, university students, and a young couple who had traveled back to Iran for their wedding.

Arash Pourzarabi, 26, and Pouneh Gourji, 25, who were graduate students in computer science at the University of Alberta, had gone to Iran for their wedding, according to Reza Akbari, president of the Iranian Heritage Society of Edmonton.

They were on the plane with four members of their wedding party and 24 other Iranian-Canadians from Edmonton, Akbari said.

“Oh God, I can’t believe this,” Akbari told Reuters.

“It’s shocking to the whole community.”

Borna Ghotbi, a close friend of the newlyweds since they were all undergraduates at Tehran’s Sharif University, said their wedding took place three days ago.

Another couple, Siavash Ghafouri Azar and Sara Mamani, had also just married in Iran, according to a Montreal university professor who taught Azar. The couple, both engineers, had just bought a house in a Montreal suburb.

Negar Mortazavi, Iranian-American journalist, has tweeted this interview with Hamed Esmaeilion, whose wife Parisa and their daughter Reera were killed in the crash.