Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described Tuesday the deadly Ukraine plane crash as a “tragic event”, vowing that the incident will be thoroughly investigated.
In a televised speech, he called the crash an “unforgivable error”, pledging that all those involved in the incident will be punished.
Rouhani stressed that the fact that the Iranian military had admitted to downing the plane was a “good first step”.
“We should assure people that it will not happen again,” he said, adding that the government was “accountable to Iranians and other nations who lost lives in the plane crash”.
In a separate development on Tuesday, Iran’s judicial spokesman Gholam Hossein Ismaili said that Iranian authorities had arrested several people in connection with the downing of the Ukrainian plane.
“We have arrested some people because of their role in the Ukrainian plane’s crash; an investigation is underway to find out the accident’s reason,” the spokesman said.
He added that one of the black boxes had already been sent to France for decoding.
The Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 was shot down by mistake shortly after taking off from Tehran before dawn last Wednesday (January 8).
Source: Agencies
