“Plane on Fire”: New Video Shows Alleged Ukrainian Plane Burning in the Air

New video footage may help reconstruct the timeline of events.

Iranian Twitter user Nariman Gharib, who published yesterday a video showing what is allegedly a Ukrainian plane in Tehran being hit by a missile, posted a new video. It was shot from a different angle and, probably, from a different location: it allegedly shows the Ukrainian plane flying in the air, engulfed in heavy fire.

The first video was verified and confirmed as authentic and filmed near the crash site by experts at The New York Times and the research centre Bellingcat. There is no data yet on the authenticity of this video.

Earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference on the crash of the Ukrainian plane in Tehran, which had 68 Canadian citizens on board. Trudeau said Canadian intelligence data indicate that the Ukrainian plane was shot down by an Iranian missile.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump, speaking to journalists, admitted that the Ukrainian plane could have been shot down “by mistake by one side.” Trump said he does not believe the version about a technical malfunction and called for waiting for the results of the official investigation and the study of the recovered black boxes.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that there is “a mass of information” that the Ukrainian plane could have been shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.

Head of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization Ali Abedzadeh, in turn, denied reports that the Ukrainian Boeing could have been hit by a missile. He claims that after takeoff the plane continued flying for another five minutes, and the “pilot tried to return to the airport but failed.” According to Abedzadeh, he does not understand “how an aircraft can be shot down by a missile or a shell” so that the pilot then “tried to return to the airport.”

To recall, on the morning of January 8, around 06:10 local time, a Ukrainian plane of Ukraine International Airlines crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran airport (Iran). There were 176 people on board, including passengers and crew. Among them were 11 Ukrainians: 2 passengers and 9 crew members. The remaining passengers were citizens of Iran (82), Canada (63), Sweden (10), Afghanistan (4), Germany (3) and the United Kingdom (3). No one survived.