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Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has said his government will provide financial support to the families of the 57 citizens and 29 permanent residents of the country who died when their plane was shot down over Iran last week.
Mr Trudeau said he still expects Iran to compensate the families but said they need help now for funerals, travel to Iran and bills.
He said the families will receive 25,000 Canadian dollars (€17,250).
Mr Trudeau said any money Iran provides at a later date will go straight to the families and will not be reimbursed to the Canadian government.
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Iran bears full responsibility for having shot down the civilian plane and urged Iran to send the flight and cockpit data recorders from a crashed jet to France for analysis, Mr Trudeau said.
Iran says it shot down the Ukrainian airliner last week by accident. A total of 176 people died in the disaster.
“Iran does not have the level of technical expertise and mostly the equipment necessary to be able to analyse these damaged black boxes quickly,” Mr Trudeau said.
“There is a beginning of a consensus that . . . [France] would be the right place to send those black boxes to get proper information from them in a rapid way and that is what we are encouraging the Iranian authorities to agree to.”
Mr Trudeau said about 20 families of Canadian victims had requested the return of the bodies and told reporters he expected the first remains to be repatriated “in the coming days”. He did not give more details. – Reuters and AP