Iranian minister says Ukrainian plane crash caused by "technical failure"

Despite media reports that the Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed near Iranian capital of Tehran was shot down by Iranian missiles, Iran insisted it was caused by "technical failure."

TEHRAN -- Iran's Minister of Road and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami rejected the speculation that the crash of a Ukrainian passenger plane was caused by Iran's missiles, Press TV reported on Thursday.

"There are rumors that a terrorist attack, explosion or shooting at the plane may have caused the incident, but they are not true. Technical failure has been the cause of the incident," Eslami was quoted as saying.

"Had it been the case, the plane must have exploded up in the air, but that has not happened, because the plane caught fire due to a technical failure. The problem first caused its communication and control systems to stop working, and subsequently resulted in its crash," Eslami said.

Iran will not hand over the black boxes recovered from the crash site to the American Boeing company or any other countries, he said.

The Iranian technicians and experts from Boeing will recover data from the black boxes in Iran, he added.

On Wednesday, a Boeing 737 passenger plane, operated by Ukraine International Airlines crashed shortly after its takeoff from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran on Wednesday morning. All 176 people onboard the plane were killed.

The crash came hours after Iran fired missiles at two bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. killing of a senior Iranian commander in Iraq last Friday.

Western media reports, citing U.S. intelligence and government officials, said Thursday that the crash was shot down by two missiles fired by Iranian military accidentally.