Two missiles fired at Ukraine airliner

Iran has confirmed two Tor-M1 missiles were fired at a Ukrainian airliner brought down this month, in a catastrophic error that killed all 176 people on board and sparked angry protests.

The country’s civil aviation authority said it has yet to receive a positive response after requesting technical assistance from France and the United States to decode black boxes from the downed airliner.

The Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines plane was accidentally shot down shortly after takeoff from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on January 8.

Iran has come under mounting international pressure to carry out a full and transparent investigation into the air disaster.

Iran had for days denied Western claims based on US intelligence reports that the Boeing 737 had been shot down. It came clean on January 11.

The deadly blunder triggered days of student-led protests mainly in the Iranian capital.

The 737 was downed when Iran’s air defences had been on high alert hours after its armed forces fired more than 20 ballistic missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq. That was carried out in reprisal for a January 3 US drone strike that killed Iran’s most prominent military commander, Qasem Soleimani, near Baghdad airport.