TEHRAN: Iran is marking the 28th anniversary of the downing of its commercial airliner by a United States Navy guided-missile cruiser back in 1988 as the aircraft was flying in Iranian airspace, and over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
The plane, an Airbus A300B2 of Iran’s flag carrier, Iran Air, had just taken off from the southern Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas at 10:17 a.m. local time (UTC 0330) with 274 passengers and 16 crew members on board, and was climbing inside an internationally recognized route to Dubai when the US cruiser, the USS Vincennes, fired two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles at it, one of which hit the plane.
US officials claimed their warship had mistaken the airliner for a supersonic and variable-sweep wing Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter jet.
Relatives of those killed in the U.S. Navy’s 1988 shootdown of an Iranian passenger jet have thrown flowers into the Strait of Hormuz to mark their deaths.
Iranian state television aired footage Wednesday of mourners in the strait, as armed Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast boats patrolled around them. They tossed gladiolas into the strait as some wept.
The July 3, 1988 downing of Iran Air flight 655 by the U.S. Navy remains one of the moments the Iranian government points to in its decades-long distrust of America. The U.S. Navy’s mistaken missile fire killed 290 people.
This year’s commemoration comes amid heightened tensions with the U.S., after President Donald Trump pulled America from Iran’s nuclear deal. Iran this week broke a low-enriched uranium stockpile limitation set by the deal.
(Agencies)
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