Grim footage has been released showing the burning wreckage of the Ukrainian airliner that crashed near Tehran shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 people aboard.
The Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 went down after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, turning farmland on the outskirts of the capital into a sprawling field of flaming debris.
The 3½-year-old plane carried 167 passengers and nine crew members from different nations.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said there were 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians and 11 Ukrainians — the nine crew members and two passengers — aboard.
There also were 10 Swedish, four Afghan, three German and three British nationals on the doomed flight, he added.
The pilots did not declare an emergency before the crash, an official from the Iran Civil Aviation Organization reportedly has said.
Airline officials said most of the passengers were en route to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, transiting through there to other destinations.
Officials at the Boryspil airport in Kiev told the Associated Press that passengers on this flight are usually Iranian students heading back to Ukraine after winter holidays.
