Ukraine's government confirmed that a Malaysia Airlines passenger airline crashed in eastern Ukraine late this afternoon, close to the Russian border.
The plane was carrying 295 people on board, according to Interfax news agency, including 280 passengers and 15 crew members. The flight departed at 12:14 p.m. from Amsterdam en route to Kuala Lumpur, and was reportedly shot down around 4:20 p.m. It is presumed that all 295 people are dead, according to Ukrainian Interior Ministry spokesman Anton Gerashchenko.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced that the government is launching an investigation into the incident, but called the event “a terrorist act.” He said Ukrainian forces had nothing to do with the plane crash. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the plane was brought down by a missile. Government emergency officials were holding a news conference at 8:30 p.m. on July 17.
Malaysian President Mohd Najib Tun Razak tweeted: “I am shocked by reports that an MH plane crashed. We are launching an immediate investigation.”
According to the anti-terrorist operation’s information center, Ukraine’s aviation did not fly today. The area where the plane crashed was in an area controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists.
Russian-backed separatist leader Igor Girkin (who also goes by the name of Strelkov) claimed credit. “The plane has just been taken down somewhere around Torez (Donetsk Oblast). It lays there behind the Progress mine. We did warn you – do not fly in ‘our sky.’ And here is the video proving another ‘bird’ falling down. The bird went down behind the slagheap, not in the residential district. So no peaceful people were injured.” There is also information about another plane shot.
Strelkov, however, apparently mistook the plane for the Ukrainian air force’s. He is a Moscow native who Ukraine’s State Security Service says is a high-ranking officer in Russia’s military intelligence department.
It appears the Russian-backed separatists had weapons capable of downing a commercial flight at 10 kilometers high or 35,000 feet high.
On June 29, representatives of Donetsk People’s Republic boasted that they took over a Ukrainian military base that had Buk ground-to-air missiles, but would not say how many.
The operational range of missiles fired by Buk is up to 25 kilometers, or 2.5 times the altitude at which the Malaysian plane flew.
Malaysia Airlines also tweeted that they lost contact with the plane: “Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow.”
Boeing has stated that it is also aware of the incident. Air France subsequently stated that it will avoid Ukrainian airspace and Reuters reported that Aeroflot is also avoiding Ukrainian air space. Reportedly, 23 Americans were on board.
Video footage reportedly shot by Russia’s LifenNews and then deleted from their account but preserved by other users. The journalists in the video speak with a heavy Russian accent.
An Interfax report said the plane came down 50 kilometers (20 miles) short of entering Russian airspace. It “began to drop, afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory,” the unnamed source said.
Interfax news agency said, quoting an unnamed source, that the plane disappeared from radar at a height of 10,000 meters after which it came down near the town of Shakhtarsk. In a telephone interview televised on Channel 5, a Torez resident said that when the plane spiraling down after being hit, “it looked like a cargo transport plane, and only later did we realize it was a passenger plane.”
The plane crashed in the war zone where Ukraine’s government forces and Russia-backed separatists continue to fight. Two Ukrainian military planes were shot down in the area in the past week. Ukraine’s government accuses Russia of complicity.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk called for an international investigation of all three plane crashes that took place over Donbas since July 14.
“The government calls for a large-scale international investigation into the downing on July 14 in the Luhansk region of an AN-26 Armed Forces of Ukraine (plane) and on July 16 in the Donetsk region of a SU-25 aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the crash of Malaysian Boeing 777, with the participation of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European Organisation for the safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL),”Yatseniuk said in a statement.
