A Ukrainian passenger plane crashed in the morning near the Tehran Imam Khomeini airport. According to the Isna news agency, the Boeing 737 had a total of 180 passengers and crew members on board.
There is still no information about their fate, the report said. Rescue workers are on site. According to Russian media, the airline Mau's plane was on its way from Tehran to Kiev and crashed shortly after departure.
Shortly after the Iranian missile attacks on military bases in Iraq, the American aviation authority FAA banned US aircraft from using airspace in parts of the Middle East. Aircraft registered in the US over the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, Iraq and Iran may no longer operate “due to increased military activity and increasing political tensions,” said a statement on Tuesday (local time). There is an increased risk that a flying object will be misidentified.
At first, it was completely unclear whether the crash of the Ukrainian machine was linked to the military escalation of the conflict between Iran and the United States. A few hours earlier there had been an Iranian retaliatory attack against US soldiers in Iraq. The attacks confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense on the American military bases Ain al-Assad in central Iraq and a base in the northern city of Erbil on Wednesday night are considered revenge for the killing of top Iranian general Ghassem Soleimani by a U.S. airstrike.
Local Shiite militias supported by Iran have recently attacked US bases in Iraq more often with technically simpler missiles. However, a direct attack from Iran marks a new level of escalation in the conflict between the United States and Iran. Iran and the United States had been putting up with martial threats for days, promising drastic responses to aggressive actions by the opposite side.
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