Iran commiserates with Malaysia on jetliner crash

TIN news:    Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has offered condolences to the Malaysian nation and government over a Malaysian airliner crash in east Ukraine which killed all 295 people aboard.
 
In a message to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, the president said that he was deeply saddened by the tragic incident.
 
In his message, President Rouhani also sympathized with the bereaved families of victims.
 
On Thursday, a Malaysia Airlines jet with 295 people on board crashed in east Ukraine on a flight from the Dutch capital Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The crash site has been the center of fighting between pro-Russian fighters and Ukrainian military forces. 
 
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the Boeing 777 may have been shot down.
 
"We do not exclude that the plane was shot down and confirm that the Ukraine armed forces did not fire at any targets in the sky," Poroshenko said in a statement.
 
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, also said on his Facebook page that the plane had crashed in Ukrainian territory after being hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.
 
Pro-Russian activists fighting the Ukrainian government blamed Ukrainian military forces for the incident.
 
“Witnesses watching the flight of the Boeing 777 passenger plane saw it being attacked by a battle plane of the Ukrainian forces,” the government of Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) said in a statement.
 
“After that the passenger plane split in two in the air and fell on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic,” it added.
 
Malaysia's prime minister said on Thursday that he is launching immediate probe into the jetliner crash.