Engine fire led to Ukrainian Boeing crash in Tehran

Ukraine's Boeing 737-800 had suffered an engine malfunction before it went down a few minutes after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport, its official has said.

The engine caught fire when the plane was airborne, a senior public relations official at Iran’s major airport, Ali Khashani, was cited by local media. The fatal engine failure purportedly saw the jet hitting the ground between the cities of Sharhiar and Parand early this morning.

The airliner, operated by Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), carried 168 passengers and nine crew, most of whom were Iranians, according to Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization.