Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikejb | Hacker News Reader

The Ukrainian embassy reported preliminary information indicates engine failure, and excludes a rocket or terrorist attack as cause. [1]

Particularly at this time, I wouldn't trust random sources on the web to provide accurate information about events.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/iran-plane-cras...

View on HN

The embassy has withdrawn their initial statement [1].

[1] (Ukrainian) https://nv.ua/ukr/ukraine/politics/aviakatastrofa-v-tegerani...

How much can you trust government agencies in times like these? With so many competing intelligence agencies, quite possibly sitting on the brink of WWIII, I don't think it's outlandish for an official source to lie, intentionally or not.

Then why even talk about anything at that point if you were not there yourself.

The amount of trust put into any conclusion at this point should be minimal, and whilst I understand and partly share the lack of trust in embassy statements, I posted this to counter the blind "looks like it was shot down, someone on twitter said so" conclusion.

They might not even be lying: would it be classified as a "terrorist attack" if it's a mistake by the Iranians? A "rocket attack" wouldn't hit an airplane, you need guided missiles for that.

I see it's too immature to conduct an engine failure in this situation without investigation report.

That's probably why they said "preliminary information indicates". And the rumors of a missile was probably the reason why they felt the need of putting out a statement in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com