ISTANBUL
Iran urged Qatar on Sunday to allow an Iranian air force team to enter the Gulf country to investigate the fate of three pilots whom Tehran claims are held by Doha despite Qatari denial.
In a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency, Mohammad Bagherzadeh, the commander of the Committee for the Search for Missing Persons of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, said a “fact-finding” team has been waiting for months for permission to enter Qatar and conduct field investigations to determine the pilots’ fate.
He urged the Qatari government to allow the Iranian team into the country and called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently follow up on the case.
Bagherzadeh also said Iranian authorities had been unable to obtain information from Kuwait regarding the fate of four Iranian nationals whom Tehran suspects were captured on Kuwaiti territory.
On March 2, Qatar’s Defense Ministry announced that it had shot down two Su-24 aircraft from Iran. Tehran said at the time that four pilots were killed when their aircraft were hit during attacks on a US base in Qatar. Iran also said the body of one pilot has since been returned, while the fate of the other three pilots remained unknown.
On Saturday, Qatar rejected Iranian accusations that the three pilots had been detained by Doha.
The US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, with Tehran launching retaliatory strikes targeting countries hosting US military assets across the region.
Iran and the US agreed to a ceasefire in April and subsequently signed a memorandum of understanding in June aimed at ending their military conflict and reaching a lasting peace agreement.
The deal, however, collapsed last month, with Tehran and Washington exchanging attacks for nearly two weeks before US President Donald Trump abruptly halted the bombardment amid efforts to revive the agreement.
