New footage has emerged that appears to show the moment an Iranian missile brought down the Ukrainian passenger plane near Tehran’s airport on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board, according to media reports.
As investigators work to determine an official cause of the accident, the video offered new clues about the crash, which came hours after a violent confrontation between Iran and the United States.
US and allied officials on Thursday said they believed an Iranian missile had accidentally brought the plane down, reports The New York Times.
A small explosion occurred when what appears to be a missile hit the plane above Parand, a city near the airport, but the plane did not explode, the video showed, according to The Times.
The jet continued flying for several minutes and turned back toward the airport. The plane, which by then had stopped transmitting its signal, flew toward the airport ablaze before it exploded and crashed quickly, The Times reported citing other verified videos.
"In the video, approximately 10 seconds pass between the flash of impact of what is believed to be a missile and the sound of the explosion reaching the camera," reads the Times report.
The sound delay indicates the plane was a little over two miles from the camera at the time of impact. That distance lines up with the path of the Ukraine International Airlines flight, as recorded by the flight tracking company FlightRadar24.
Other details in the video help verify its authenticity. Buildings seen in the background are at least five stories high and have a distinctive design. Several rows of evenly spaced buildings are visible, consistent with the aerial view of the building compound in satellite imagery, according to The Times.