Iranian warplanes have forced a Belarusian fighter [sic] jet to land for interrogations after the plane violated the country's airspace.
Iranian officials forced the Ilyushin Il-76 to land in the southern port city of Bushehr early Wednesday morning, Belarusian News Agency BelTA reported.
The plane was carrying a Belarusian military delegation to Doha in Qatar to attend the end of a military exercise dubbed Rapacious Falcon, Belarus' Foreign Ministry said according to BelTA.
Members of a military delegation aboard the plane were interrogated by Iranian officials before they were permitted to leave Iranian soil.
Belarus' Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to Belarus, Seyyed Abdollah Hosseini, who apologized and assured that Tehran would conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident, which he said occurred due to lack of coordination.
Yet another intercept/forced landing in Iran that has been reported in the Iranian press.
Was press TV being "ignorant" or ambiguous intentionally? An Il-76 is not a "fighter" jet, so i don't know why they called it that in the main article....
ReplyDeletePressTV makes mistakes. in the past, they've used photos of the wrong planes for articles about the IRIAF and IRGCAF. I'd like to say they're improving, but then they report a transport aircraft as a fighter. I believe they meant that the type was a military aircraft.
ReplyDeleteIt happens in the Israeli press, as well. Recently, reporting on Iran's recent air exercise, the Jerusalem Post included the Chinese built F7 in a list of American built planes participating in the drill.