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As Iran, US Take Step Back from Brink, Canada Grieves

Associated Press

   TORONTO - The worst had passed, it seemed, and the United States and
   Iran no longer appeared poised at the edge of war.

   "All is well!'' President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday night, days
   after a U.S. drone strike killed Iran's most powerful general, and
   Iran, after a barrage of missiles, had signaled it was stepping back
   from further escalation.

   But 27 seconds before Trump's tweet, commercial flight trackers had
   lost contact with a Ukrainian International Airlines jet that had just
   taken off from Tehran's main airport. On board were 176 people,
   including 138 passengers on their way to Canada and at least 63
   Canadian citizens and 11 Ukrainians. The plane, which never made a
   mayday call, slammed moments later into the ground.

   Everyone on board died. They were students, newlyweds, doctors and
   parents. The youngest was a 1-year-old girl, Kurdia Molani, who was
   flying back home with her parents to the Toronto suburb of Ajax.

   By late Thursday, Western leaders said that Iran had most likely shot
   down the jetliner with a surface-to-air missile -- probably by
   accident. The loss of so many lives transformed the U.S.-Iran
   confrontation, which had seemed to conclude with limited bloodshed.

   Instead, what had begun with a drone attack on Gen. Qassem Soleimani's
   motorcade at the Baghdad airport had suddenly rippled outward until
   dozens of Iranian-Canadians, dozens of Iranian students studying in
   Canada, were dead.

   "The community is overwhelmed with mourning and sadness,'' said Payman
   Parseyan, a prominent Iranian-Canadian in western Canada, counting
   through the names of the friends he had lost.

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