Iran plane crash: Possible missile attack among scenarios

Iran plane crash: Possible missile attack among scenarios

PanARMENIAN.Net - Bellingcat founder and author Eliot Higgins has promised that the investigative journalism collective will check the possibility of a missile attack on a Ukrainian Boeing 737 in Tehran in connection with the appearance of a photograph of a rocket-like object allegedly found at the crash site, 112.international reports.

Higgins made a post with a picture of the incident in his microblog on Twitter.

“Until the location of this debris is confirmed, which is next to impossible with this image, I would treat it with caution. There's other examples of this type of debris documented in other conflicts, so there's no way to know this is in Iran,” he wrote.

Higgins refers to the profile of Ashkan Monfared who posted the photo. Monfared, whose profile indicates affiliation with the Iranian protest movement, claims that a rocket-like item was found at the crash site of the Ukrainian Boeing 737.

"This is a fragment found at the crash scene of a Ukrainian passenger plane that fell down in front of a resident's house.… Isn't that a rocket?" Monfared wrote.

Higgins reacted to the photo.

“The problem with this photo of the remains of an AA missile is it's been taken at an angle where it'll be next to impossible to geolocate, so unless another image appears which can be geolocated it won't be possible to verify it's in Iran.” he added.

Another journalist, Eric Toler, points to the similarity of the subject in the photo with the Russian air defense system "Thor" used by Iran.

"This is the original source of the photo being passed around, it was allegedly found near the PS752 flight. Speculation that it's a Tor-M (Ukrainian air defense system used by Iran)," Toler suggested.

A Boeing 737 operated by Ukraine's International Airlines, with 176 people aboard, crashed in Tehran, not far from Imam Khomeini airport on Wednesday, January 8. No one on board survived.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry revealed later in the day that no Armenian citizens or nationals were among the casualties.

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