TEHRAN – The Legal Department of the President’s Office on Wednesday passed a bill to pay $150,000 to each of the bereaved families of the victims of the Ukrainian plane which was downed in an accident earlier this year.

“The Ministry of Transport and Urban Development has been instructed to arrange for the payment of $ 150,000 or its equivalent in euros to the families of each of the victims as soon as possible and to pay the amounts to the beneficiaries based on the relevant documents,” the Legal Department announced, according to IRNA.

It said the damages resulting from the deaths of the victims should be paid without any discrimination based on nationality, citizenship and gender and according to the laws of the victims’ countries.

On January 8, an Iranian air defense unit mistakenly shot down Flight 752 of the Ukrainian International Airlines shortly after take-off from Tehran en route to Kiev.

167 passengers and 9 crew members were killed in the downing. The victims included 82 Iranians, 63 Iranian-Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans, and three British nationals.

The operator had mistaken the Boeing 737-800 with a cruise missile at a time when the air defense systems were at the highest level of alert following the United States’ earlier assassination of prominent Iranian commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

On January 3, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered drone strikes that martyred Major General Soleimani, chief of the IRGC Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

In the early hours of January 8, the IRGC attacked Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq, where U.S. forces were stationed, as part of its promised “tough revenge” for the U.S. terror attack.

The downing of the Ukrainian plane happened hours after the attack on Ain al-Assad airbase.

MH/PA