Tehran, Jan 11 (AFP/APP): Iran’s civil aviation chief denied Friday that a missile downed a Ukrainian airliner which crashed killing all 176 people on board, rejecting Western claims of a catastrophic mistake by Tehran’s air defences. The cause of the crash is to be announced Saturday after an investigating committee meeting in the presence of foreign and local parties involved, Iran’s Fars news agency said, quoting an “informed source”. The report came as Ukraine said its experts had been granted access to the black box flight recorders and as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated it was “likely” an Iranian missile had downed the plane. Tehran has been facing mounting international pressure to allow a “credible” investigation into the crash, which several Western governments have blamed on an accidental missile strike. “One thing is for certain, this airplane was not hit by a missile,” Iran’s civil aviation chief Ali Abedzadeh said, after Tehran invited the United States, Ukraine, Canada and others to join the investigation. The Boeing 737 crashed on Wednesday shortly after Iran launched missiles at US forces in Iraq in response to the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad. … Continue reading Iran denies missile downed Ukrainian plane