The collision, whether caused or accidental, of a missile and a civilian plane has punctuated the history of aviation since the end of the 1930s. These crashes, increasingly deadly as technology evolves, airline industry, have sometimes killed presidents and triggered one of the deadliest genocides of the 20th centurye century, in addition to costing the lives of countless innocent passengers and crew members shot down in the sky.
Russia still singled out
The crash of an Embraer 190 chartered by Azerbaijan Airlines on Christmas Day near the Kazakh port city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea killed 38 people — and raised another accusing finger in the direction of Moscow . Azerbaijani investigators blame the tragedy on a new blunder by Russian air defense.
The plane was flying from Baku, Azerbaijan, to the Chechen city of Grozny — a journey of 550 km. The plane would have deviated from its course for a reason that is still unclear. Russia first blamed a collision with birds for the deviation, then the thick fog that made visibility zero as it approached Grozny.
In a statement released on Friday, Russia’s air administration, Rosaviatsia, once again changed its version and instead blamed Ukraine for the tragedy. According to the Russian agency, a squad of drones piloted by kyiv attacked Grozny as the aircraft approached the city. The Azerbaijan Airlines plane reportedly missed two attempts to land in Grozny, according to Rosaviatsia, before heading to Aktau and crashing with 67 people on board.
The FlightRadar24 website indicates that the plane’s altitude varied more than 100 times and by more or less 2,400 meters in the 75 minutes before it crashed. Several videos show the plane’s fuselage riddled with holes and some survivors report that shrapnel injured passengers on board.
A national tragedy near Tehran
On January 8, 2020, 179 people, including 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents, lost their lives after two Iranian surface-to-air missiles downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 minutes after takeoff from Tehran. Iran initially denied responsibility for the tragedy before admitting, three days after the crash, that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had mistaken the plane for an American missile.
A few hours before shooting down the plane, the Iranian army had bombed American bases as part of Operation Martyr Soleimani carried out to avenge Major General Qasem Soleimani, assassinated in a drone attack led by the United States five days ago earlier.
The deadliest
The deadliest air tragedy caused by a missile occurred in Ukraine on July 17, 2014. On that day, a Boeing 777 with 298 people on board crashed near the village of Hrabove in the Donetsk oblast, less than an hour after taking off from Amsterdam en route to Kuala Lumpur. The investigation concludes that a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile, launched from territory controlled by separatists affiliated with Russia, caused the tragedy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has always denied his country’s responsibility for the tragedy, instead placing the blame on Ukraine.
The spark of the Rwandan genocide
On April 6, 1994, two missiles shot down a Falcon 50 plane manufactured by Dassault above Kigali airport, killing 12 people. The death of two passengers on board, Rwandan Presidents Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, however, ignited a genocide that would kill hundreds of thousands of others in one of the bloodiest episodes of the 20th century. Several investigations have attempted to establish responsibility for the attack without reaching a definitive conclusion. The most widespread theories attribute this double assassination to Hutu extremists or to the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Paul Kagame, president of the country since 2000.
The first in history
The first ever civilian plane crash caused by hostile fire occurred in 1938 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. On August 24, 1938, the Kweilina Chinese Douglas DC-2 plane, takes off from Hong Kong with 17 people on board towards Wizhou, its first stopover. Less than 30 minutes after takeoff, Japanese planes chased him; the American pilot managed to land, but the Japanese air force strafed the aircraft and killed 14 passengers, including a baby and a five-year-old child.
The attack on the aircraft captured the imagination since it was a first in aviation history, in addition to causing a diplomatic incident with the United States. THE New York Times mentioned, at the time, that the Japanese attack against the Kweilin was actually targeting Sun Fo, the only son of the founder of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen.
