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January 11, 2020 Iran admitted this morning that its military "involuntarily" shot down the Ukrainian airliner, killing all 176 on board. State television, citing military sources, attributed the killing to a human error. The plane, a Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines, crashed on the outskirts of Tehran during takeoff, a few hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles against US forces in Iraq. For days Iran has denied that it was a missile that shot down the plane. A thesis not accepted by the United States and Canada which almost immediately accused Iran of shooting down the aircraft.

The handling of the accident by the Iranian authorities has been very smoky from the start: denying the delivery of the black boxes to Boeing and the USA and cleaning the crash site of the plane's wreckage with unusual speed. Even yesterday morning the president of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization, Ali Abedzadeh, had denied the allegations admitted today by calling the allegations "fraudulent" and speaking of a "psychological operation by the United States government.