A Boeing 737 plane carrying 176 people aboard has crashed after taking off from Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran, Iran, killing all passengers.
Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, which was bound to Kyiv, crashed after the plane took off at the Iran airport. Majority of the passengers from the crash, which happened at 06:12 local time, were from Iran and Canada.
Initially, Ukraine's Tehran embassy attributed the incident to engine failure but it has since retracted the statement. The embassy said that any comment regarding the accident's cause prior to a commission's inquiry was not official.
Meanwhile, Iranian media reported that it was due to technical problems and quoted an aviation official who said no emergency had been declared. Debris from the Boeing 737-800 NG plane were discovered 10 kilometers from the airport and rescue workers are continuing to search the wreckage for victims.
According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko, the passengers were 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians including all nine crew, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Britons and three Germans.
The large number of Canadian passengers is assumed to be due to the relatively inexpensive flights offered by the airline via Kyiv to Toronto. Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde is coordinating with Prystaiko to seek further information about the incident.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he will cut his Oman trip short to fly back to Kyiv. Zelensky warned against  "speculation or unchecked theories regarding the catastrophe" until official reports were provided.
He released a statement saying: "My sincere condolences to the relatives and friends of all passengers and crew." Zelensky said the country's entire civil aviation fleet would be checked for airworthiness and criminal proceedings would be opened into the disaster.
As a result of the crash, Ukraine International Airlines has decided to suspend flights to Tehran indefinitely. It also said that the Boeing 737-800 was built in 2016 and had its last scheduled maintenance was on Monday.
