简体中文
Iran on Tuesday dismissed media reports that a Ukrainian plane has been hijacked in Iran, saying the aircraft left Iran for Kiev after it was refueled in the northeastern city of Mashhad, according to Tasnim new agency.
"That plane was refueled in the airport of Mashhad yesterday andlanded in the airport of Kiev at 21:50 (local time)," Mohammad Hassan Zibakhsh, spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran, was quoted by the new agency as saying.
The response came after Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Yenin told loclal Hromadske Radio that a Ukrainian plane that arrived in the Afghan capital Kabul to evacuate Ukrainians was hijacked by unidentified people who flew it to Iran.
The report was also later denied by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry, according to Ukraine's national news agency Ukrinform.
"The rumors spread in the media about the alleged hijacking of a Ukrainian plane in Kabul are not true; all the planes involved in the evacuation of Ukrainians have returned home," Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, told Ukrinform.
"There are no captured Ukrainian planes in Kabul or elsewhere. The information about the hijacked plane that is being circulated by some media outlets is not true," he said.
The spokesperson said Yenin was just generally explaining the unprecedented difficulties that diplomats had to face in extracting Ukrainians from Afghanistan.
