Iran Sends Black Boxes Of Downed Ukrainian Airliner To France For Analysis

Iran has admitted that its forces accidentally shot down the Kyiv-bound passenger plane, killing all 176 people on board.

Iran has sent the black boxes of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which crashed shortly after takeoff in Tehran on January 8 after being struck by two missiles, killing 176 people.

"The black boxes were transferred to Paris yesterday by aviation officials and a judge, and their deciphering will start on Monday (July 20)," Foreign Ministry official Mohsen Baharvand was quoted as telling the Etemad newspaper on July 18.

A source at France's Bureau for Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) was quoted by AFP as saying that the boxes had arrived and would be at the agency from July 20.

Flight 752 was struck by two missiles and crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran's main airport on January 8.

The Islamic republic admitted in the following days that its forces accidentally shot down the Kyiv-bound passenger plane.

In a recent report, Iranian aviation authorities concluded that a misaligned missile battery and miscommunication between soldiers and superior officers were to blame for incident.

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New Video Shows Two Iranian Missiles Downing Ukrainian Airliner

Flight 752 was downed the same night that Iran had launched a ballistic-missile attack that targeted U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and Tehran's air defenses were on high alert at the time in case of retaliation.

That attack was in response to an American drone strike that had killed the powerful commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad five days earlier.

Canada and Ukraine had demanded that Iran, which had no means of decoding the crucial information contained in the data recording devices, send the black boxes abroad for analysis.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP