North Vancouver bakery becomes a shrine to those killed on Ukraine International Airlines flight in Iran

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      One of the saddest sights in Metro Vancouver is outside the Amir Bakery in the 1900 block of Lonsdale Avenue.

      That's where a growing number of flowers and candles have been placed to commemorate the loss of Ayeshe Poughaderi, 36, and her 17-year-old daughter, Fatemeh Pasavand.

      They were among the 176 passengers and crew onboard the Ukraine International Airlines aircraft that crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's main airport.

      Poughaderi's husband, Amir Pasvand, was not on the plane.

      North Vancouver is the centre of the Lower Mainland's Persian community, though there are also many Iranian Canadians living in West Vancouver, Vancouver, and the Tri-Cities area.

      Other North Vancouver residents who died in the crash included a couple on their 30s, Mohammadhosse (Daniel) Saket and Fatemah (Faye) Kazeranim, physicians Firouzeh Madani and Naser Pourshabanoshibi, and Langara College student Delaram Dadashnejad.

      Others who died included the Port Coquitlam family of Ardalan Ebnoddin-Hamidi, Niloofar Razzaghi, and Kamyar Ebnoddin-Hamidi; a brother and sister who graduated from UBC, Zeynab Asadi Lari and Mohammadhossein Asadi Lari; and University of Victoria student Roja Omidbakhsh.

      Two new names of Lower Mainland residents included among the dead are UBC postdoctoral research fellow Mehran Abtahi and West Vancouver hotel worker and mother of three, Soheila Massoumeh Moshref Razavi Moghaddam.

      This brings the total to 15 British Columbian residents who never made it back home from Iran.

      There were 138 passengers, including 63 Canadians, on the Ukraine International Airlines flight who were planning to take a connecting flight from Kyiv to Canada, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

      Today, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that it's since been learned that 57 of the passengers were Canadian.

      Trudeau said that intelligence and satellite information suggests that it was taken down by an Iranian missile.

      The prime minister emphasized yesterday that this may have been fired unintentionally following Iranian missile attacks on two U.S. military bases in Iraq.

      Comments