BY MAHITA GAJANAN
UPDATED: JANUARY 10, 2020 11:42 PM ET | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: JANUARY 8, 2020
Iranian officials have admitted to accidentally shooting down a Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet on Wednesday, killing all 176 on board. In a statement released Saturday, the government blamed “human error” for its military firing the missiles that destroyed the Boeing 737-800, the Associated Press reported.
The Iranian government had previously maintained that engine failure caused the crash, which occurred shortly after the airliner took off from Imam Khomeini International Airport outside Tehran, bound for Kyiv. Many of the passengers were due to make a connecting flight to Toronto—82 Iranians, 57 Canadians and 11 Ukrainians were among the dead.
The crash happened amid heightened tension in the region, just hours after Iran launched ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq that house American forces in response to an American drone strike that killed Iran’s top military general, Qasem Soleimani.
A statement from the military on Iranian state media said that the plane was mistaken for a “hostile target,” adding that forces were at the “highest level of readiness” at the time, according to the AP.
“In such a condition, because of human error and in a unintentional way, the flight was hit,” according to the statement. The military apologized, said it was improving its systems to ensure a mistake like this couldn’t happen again and said the people responsible for firing the missiles would be prosecuted.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif blamed the U.S. for Iran’s mistaken decision to shoot down the plane, tweeting: “Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster.”
He added: “Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations.”
On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that intelligence from multiple sources showed the plane was shot down by an Iranian missile. That assessment was echoed by officials in the U.S. and United Kingdom.
Three U.S. military and intelligence officials told TIME Thursday that they were confident the plane was unintentionally hit by two Iranian anti-aircraft missiles.
“All indications are that the passenger jet was hit by mistake, likely because the Iranian air defenses were on a state of high alert as they launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at U.S. facilities,” a U.S. official said.