'They are lying that our enemy is America,' protesters chanted.
from Tehran's airport bound for Kyiv last Wednesday, shortly after the IRGC carried out missile strikes against military bases in Iraq that housed U.S. troops. There were 82 Iranians aboard the flight, as well as 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians – including crew members, four British citizens, four Afghans and three Germans. Some of the passengers were also Iranian with foreign nationalities. According to Iranian officials, a member of the IRGC mistook the plane for a cruise missile.
Iranian demonstrators were particularly outraged by their government's initial decision to lie about the disaster, although they admittedly knew since last week that the flight had been shot down. Despite the fact that top officials repeatedly said that it was"impossible" for the IRGC to have shot down the aircraft, the secretary of Iran's top national security body, Ali Shamkhani, claimed that leaders never intended to cover up the disaster.
"From the start, there was no intention to conceal the causes of the accident, especially since its nature and technical characteristics...make it virtually impossible to conceal," he said, according to Iran's IRIB news agency. As the demonstrations continued on Saturday, the government moved to disperse the protesters."Khamenei enforcers firing teargas to disperse crowds of Iranian protesters gathering at Tehran's Azadi Square," Borzou Daragahi, an international correspondent forCrowds growing near Azadi Square, where just days ago mourners came out to grieve Qassem Suleimani.
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