High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The 2007 Balad aircraft crash was a January 9, 2007 airplane incident involving an Antonov An-26 airliner, which crashed while attempting to land at the U.S. military base in Balad, Iraq. The crash killed 34 people aboard and left one passenger critically injured. Officials claim the crash was caused by poor weather conditions, but other sources claim that this is a cover-up and the plane was actually shot down by a missile.