Iran says Ukraine jet's black boxes 'inoperable' minutes after strike

Iran said the black boxes of a Ukrainian passenger jet stopped working shortly after the plane was struck by the first of two missiles in January, the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported.

Three pilots can be heard for 19 seconds in the flight data recordings after the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 was hit by the first Iranian missile on Jan. 8, Touraj Dehghani, head of the Iran Civil Aviation Organization, said in a briefing on Sunday. The plane was hit by the second missile 25 seconds later.

“The first missile did considerable damage to the plane,” which rendered the flight recorders “inoperable 19 seconds after impact,” Dehghani said.

All 176 people on board the plane, which was targeted shortly after taking off from Tehran, were killed. They were mostly Iranian nationals and the debacle sparked protests in Tehran and public outrage throughout the country.

Iran’s military said they shot the aircraft by mistake after confusing it for a cruise missile at a time when its defense systems were on high alert. It had staged an attack on a US airbase in Iraq hours earlier in retaliation for the assassination of a top general by the US.

Iran delayed handing over the flight recorders -- which it cannot decode because it doesn’t have the required technology -- over disagreements about which country should handle the data. The black boxes were eventually handed over to French authorities in July, more than six months after the incident took place.