Iran puts alarm siren down to diverted Turkish flight and rainfall

A diverted Turkish flight and a siren sounding out across Tehran caused confusion on Friday, it has been reported. Claims of a Turkish plane crashing in the city were denied by officials.

The Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Tehran circled around the airport before diverting to Baku in Azerbaijan, as air raid sirens were heard in the Iranian capital. That’s when claims about the plane crash appeared on social media.

#BREAKING: The Air raid sirens across #Tehran/#Iran are active now.Unclear if anything is happening or those are just training drills.#BreakingNews #alert #إيران pic.twitter.com/LXYT45pKKN

— The Only Truth (@TheOnlyTruthInc) January 29, 2021

Reports also emerged that the siren was caused by a malfunction in the Turkish aircraft which caused the sirens to be activated, alerting the authorities of a possible crash in the west of Tehran.

https://twitter.com/FarhangNamdar/status/1355275218525294599

Iranian authorities and media then revealed that the events were unrelated. The Public Relations office of the Imam Khomeini Airport said that the Turkish Airlines plane had “changed its route to Baku due to the weather conditions and will return to Tehran as the weather conditions stabilise.”

Tehran’s deputy governor for security, Hamidreza Goudarzi, told the state-backed Mehr News Agency that the siren “was due to the activation of the sound system of one of the organisations around the town.”

According to the director-general of Tehran’s crisis management organisation, though, it was merely a security alarm “activated due to a leak caused by heavy rainfall.”

READ: Iran to step up border security in coordination with Turkey