"The
"My thoughts and prayers go to all the mourning families. I offer my sincerest condolences."
Rouhani said investigations continue to "identify and prosecute this great tragedy and unforgivable mistake."
A statement was also issued on the Twitter account of
"A sad day. Preliminary conclusions of internal investigation by Armed Forces: Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster," reads the tweet.
"Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations."
The tweets contradict a statement from
The crash Wednesday claimed the lives of 176 people, including 138 who the federal government says were bound for
Foreign Affairs Minister
Global Affairs Canada officials in
On Thursday, Prime Minister
The Canadian government is leading a group of nations that lost citizens in the
The government is also creating a task force of top public servants to make sure Canadian families affected by the crash get the support and information they need, Champagne added.
The measures follow private conversations in
The dead also included citizens of
The new
"Transparency is what the international community is looking for now," Champagne said, adding: "The world is watching what the Iranian government is doing now."
Flight 752 went down shortly after
The attack, which did not cause any casualties, was in response to a
Earlier Friday, the head of
While Western countries may hesitate to share information on such a strike because it comes from highly classified sources, videos verified by The Associated Press appear to show the final seconds of the ill-fated airliner's flight.
In one video, a fast-moving light can be seen through trees as someone films from the ground. The light appears to be the burning plane, which plummets to the earth as a huge fireball illuminates the landscape.
"However, the full extent of the TSB's role in this investigation — including the degree of site access and the type of work to be carried out once at the site or elsewhere — is still being determined," it added.
Some of those questions revolved around allegations much of the debris at the crash scene had already been cleared and that the site had not been secured, while others focused on whether
Asked about those fears, Champagne said: "Over the course of the next few days, we will see if they are genuine."
The foreign minister added that the immediate priority is getting Canadian officials into the country as
"Obviously it starts with the visas because until and unless we can have our people physically on the ground, at the site, at the meeting, we are obviously not in a position to have all the influence we want," Champagne said.
"So we have been stressing to the Iranian government to issue these visas as quickly as possible."
Iranian authorities said Friday they had recovered the black-box flight recorders from the plane.
Hassan Rezaeifar, the head of the Iranian investigation team, said recovering data from the recorders could take more than a month and that the entire investigation could stretch into next year.
Ukrainian investigators were given access Friday to the flight recorders that were recovered from the wreckage of the plane, which was bound for
But while investigators had also been to the crash site, "there are certain pieces that up until this time have not been found or gathered," he added.
This report by
—With files from The Associated Press
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