Ukrainian Airplane Crashes Just After Takeoff from Iran’s Tehran Airport, Killing as Many as 170 People

Photo credit: Ina Fassbender, AFP via Getty Images

A Ukraine International Airlines 737-800 crashed just minutes after takeoff from the Tehran airport in Iran on Wednesday morning; there were nearly 180 people on board and reportedly no survivors of the crash.

According to the Associated Press, the plane took off and then stopped sending flight data almost immediately after becoming airborne. The crash came just hours after Iran launched missile attacks against two sites in Iraq as retaliation for last week’s US airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, but the two incidents do not appear to be connected.

“After taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport, [the plane] crashed between Parand and Shahriar,” said Iranian civil aviation spokesperson Reza Jafarzadeh. “An investigation team from the national aviation department was dispatched to the location after the news was announced.”

Per the AP, the Iranian state news agency, IRNA, published a photo showing recovery efforts in a farm field not far outside Tehran, with apparent pieces of the plane nearby.