Washington: United States President Donald Trump on Thursday said he had "suspicions" about the crash of a Ukrainian airliner outside Tehran as US media reported it had been mistakenly shot down by Iran.
"I have my suspicions," Trump said. "It was flying in a pretty rough neighbourhood and somebody could have made a mistake."
Trump's remarks came as several media outlets in the US reported that the plane had been accidentally shot down by Iranian air defense systems. All 176 people aboard died in the crash near Tehran on Wednesday.
"Some people say it was mechanical. I personally don't think that's even a question," Trump said, adding "something very terrible happened."
Unnamed officials told American media that Iranian air defence systems likely accidentally shot down the airliner. Newsweek, CBS and CNN said that satellite, radar and electronic data indicated the tragic error, which followed a ballistic missile barrage by Iran on two military bases in Iraq where US troops work.
Analysts pointed to pictures shared widely online of the wrecked fuselage of the aircraft showing multiple apparent puncture holes consistent with a rocket that detonated just outside the plane, blasting shrapnel into it.
"Similar marks were visible on wreckage of MH17," CNN reporter Jim Sciutto said, referring to the Malaysian Airlines flight which was shot down only July 17, 2014 over Eastern Ukraine by a Russian-designed surface-to-air missile.
Ukraine, meanwhile, outlined four potential scenarios to explain the crash, including a missile strike and terrorism, as Iranian investigators said the plane was on fire before it fell to the ground.
Kiev said its investigators wanted to search the site of the crash southwest of Tehran for possible debris of a Russian-made missile used by Iran's military. An initial report by Iran's civil aviation organisation said the plane had experienced an unspecified technical problem.
The Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737-800, flying to Kiev and carrying mostly Iranians and Iranian-Canadians, crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport, killing all 176 on board.
The Iranian report cited witnesses on the ground and in a passing aircraft flying at a high altitude as saying the plane was on fire while in the air.
It said the three-year-old airliner, which had its last scheduled maintenance on Monday, encountered a technical problem shortly after take-off and started to head toward a nearby airport before it crashed. The report said there was no radio communication from the pilot and that the aircraft disappeared from radar at 2,440 m.
Such rumours make no sense: Iran
Iran on Thursday ruled out a missile strike as the cause of the plane crash, saying such a scenario made "no sense".
"Several internal and international flights were flying at the same time in Iranian airspace at the same altitude of 8,000 feet (2,440 m)," Iran's transport ministry said in a statement. "This story of a missile striking a plane cannot be correct at all."
"Such rumours make no sense," Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran's civil aviation organisation and deputy transport minister, said. He was reacting to rumours on social networks that the Boeing 737 was hit by a missile fired by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
Abedzadeh said Iran and Ukraine were in the process of "downloading information" from black boxes retrieved from the crash site.
"But if more specialised work is required to extract and analyse the data, we can do it in France or another country," he added.
On Wednesday, Iran's Mehr news agency -- close to ultraconservatives -- quoted Abedzadeh as saying Iran "would not give the black boxes to the Americans".
But the minister's statement on Thursday rejected "rumours of Iran's resistance to delivering the black boxes... to the US".
Iran is not obliged to have the black boxes analysed in the US, but America is one of only a few countries -- including France and Germany -- capable of carrying out such work.
Iranian authorities say initial indications showed the plane had turned back after suffering a problem.
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