Bahrain Mirror: Iran said on Saturday (January 11, 2019) in an official statement by the armed forces that the Iranian army accidentally shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight that crashed Wednesday morning, killing all 176 people on board.

Iran's state television quoted a military statement as saying that Iran "accidentally" shot down the Ukrainian plane minutes after it left Imam Khomeini airport.

The statement said what happened was due to a "human error", explaining that the Ukrainian civilian plane was shot down after approaching an Iranian Revolutionary Guard post.

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said via his Twitter account that the preliminary conclusions of the internal investigation by the armed forces concluded that what happened was "Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster".

Zarif deeply regretted what had happened, apologizing to the Iranian people, to the families of the victims and other nations affected by the incident.

The Ukrainian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed in a missile attack by Tehran on US bases in Iraq in response to the killing of General Qasem Soleimani by US forces.

Arabic Version