Iran downing of Ukranian plane is not first of its kind ...

Escalating military tensions between nations have resulted in blunders in history. The recent Ukraine airliner downing is one of several catastrophes committed during a military standoff.

Hyderabad: After much hue and cry, Iran last week admitted that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has downed the Ukranian plane claiming lives of 176 passengers and crew members on board amid tension with the US. This is not a very first time when a civilian aircraft unintentionally fell prey to the conflict between two or more superpowers. In the past, a number of major military gaffes have claimed hundreds of innocent civilians in air.

January 8, 2020:Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752

The Boeing 737-800 operating the route was shot down shortly after takeoff from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, which attributed it to human error. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani later described the accident as an "unforgivable mistake". All 176 passengers and crew were killed.

July 17, 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

The flight was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, when it was blown out of the sky over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people.

Later, an international investigative team charged four people, including three with ties to Russian intelligence. Moscow denied any involvement in the incident but experts have blamed Russian-backed separatists.

History of Civilian Planes Shot Down.

April 10, 2001: Siberia Airlines Flight 1812

As two long-range antiaircraft missiles were fired during a Ukrainian air defence exercise off the Black Sea’s Crimean coast, four minutes after a Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk crashed into the Black Sea off the Russian coast. Around 70-80 people, most of them Russian emigres to Israel died.

Later, Ukrainian president accepted investigators’ finding that his country’s military had accidentally destroyed the Russian airliner.

July 3, 1988: Iran Air Flight 655

A US Navy warship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian passenger plane that the Navy said it mistook for a jet fighter, killing all 290 people on board.

As Iranian gunboats engaged a 9,600-ton missile cruiser, the Vincennes, Iran Air Flight 655 was flying over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Americans downed the plane with a surface-to-air missile believing that they saw a hostile F-14 jet fighter.

September 1, 1983: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

All 269 passengers and crew members were killed as the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet. The airliner had strayed off course and over the erstwhile Soviet territory.

The Soviet Union contended the jet was on a spying mission, which Washington denied.

The US, Japan and the Soviet Union searched the Sea of Okhotsk for the black box recorder but said they were unable to find it.

The incident evoked the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 902 in 1978, which had a different fate: All but two passengers on that flight survived.

June 6, 1980:Itavia Flight 870

All 81 people aboard were killed as the Itavia Flight 870 was entering the final leg of a routine trip from the Italian city of Bologna, to Sicily's Palermo, when it abruptly fell into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the small island of Ustica.

Later in 2013, Italy’s highest court implicitly acknowledged that a missile fired by a warplane had hit the plane. But it did not say where that missile came from. The court also ordered that the government had to compensate the families of some of the victims.

September 3, 1978:Air Rhodesia Flight 825

February 12, 1979:Air Rhodesia Flight 827

In both incidents, rebel forces in then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, shot down two aircraft by Soviet‐made Strela heat‐seeking missiles, within five minutes of their take off from Kariba. More than 100 people were killed in these two incidents.

February 21, 1973:Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114

The Libyan flight was en route from the country's capital Tripoli to Egypt's Cairo when it was shot down by Israeli fighter aircraft over the Sinai Desert. Only five of the 113 passengers survived.

Israel claimed that the plane had flown over its military concentrations along the Suez Canal and it downed the plane to thwart a possible act of terrorism.

July 7, 1955: El Al Flight 402

Israel's plane was shot down by Bulgarian fighter jets while traveling from London to Tel Aviv. During a storm, the plane had crossed into the Bulgarian airspace. All 598 people on board were killed and under pressure, Bulgaria eventually gave Israel $2,00,000.

July 23, 1954: Cathay Pacific VR-HEU

A plane of Hong Kong-based airlines was shot down by Chinese fighter jets. Ten of the 18 people on board died. Later, Beijing apologized, saying it mistook the flight traveling from Bangkok for a Taiwanese fighter jet and that it would consider paying compensation.

A few days later, the incident grew more complicated when a US Navy aircraft searching for survivors clashed with Chinese military planes and shot down two of them.

August 24, 1938: The Kweilin incident

As Chinese-American owned DC-2, known as Kweilin had left Hong Kong for Chongqing, it was shot down by five Japanese military planes. Fourteen people had died in the incidents and an American pilot survived. At the time Beijing and Tokyo were at war.