By IRNA-Itar-Tass
Chisinau : Moldova has demanded the Iraqi authorities present an extra report of the investigation into last year’s crash of its plane Antonov-26, Moldova’s civil aviation authority told the media on Friday.
According to preliminary explanations by Turkish and Iraqi authorities the Antonov-26 plane of Moldova’s Ariantur-M cargo air carrier (board number ER-26068) crashed in bad weather at the US military base north of Baghdad on January 9, 2007.
In the meantime, there have been media reports that the plane was shot down and that the group calling itself Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility. In a statement placed on an Islamic web site in the Internet the group said that the landing plane was fired at from several directions.
“The Moldovan authorities have repeatedly asked the Iraqi authorities, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the US embassy in Chisinau for assistance in the prompt investigation of the incident.
A badly printed photocopy of a report of the investigation arrived from Iraq as late as December 2007. It carried no signatures of officials responsible, which leaves no chance of establishing the status of the document or making public the causes of the crash. For this reason an extra request has been dispatched to the Iraqi authorities, Moldova’s civil aviation authority said.
“The Americans guaranteed us a three-mile security zone around their base Anaconda, where the plane was landing. If it is true that the plane was shot down – and this is precisely what witnesses have been saying – then the promised security had not been guaranteed in reality and the responsibility, including material one, must be placed on the US military,” the civil aviation authority’s deputy general director, Iurie Zidu, told the media.
He believes that final conclusions can be made only when the full account of the investigation is available.
The crash killed 34 people on board, including five Moldovan crewmembers. There was only one survivor, a Turkish national. One of the crew, Alexei Ganzha, was also a citizen of Russia.