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| The fiery crash left debris strewn across several square miles in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border. Credit Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press |
N.Y. TIMES
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard exploded, crashed and burned on a flowered wheat field Thursday in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatists, blown out of the sky at 33,000 feet by what Ukrainian and American officials described as a Russian-made antiaircraft missile.
Ukraine accused the separatists of carrying out what it called a terrorist attack. American intelligence and military officials said the plane had been destroyed by a Russian SA-series missile, based on surveillance satellite data that showed the final trajectory and impact of the missile but not its point of origin.
There were strong indications that those responsible may have errantly downed what they had thought was a military aircraft only to discover, to their shock, that they had struck a civilian airliner. Everyone aboard was killed, their corpses littered among wreckage that smoldered late into the summer night.
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| The crash site of a Malaysia Airlines 777 carrying 298 people in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Credit Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press |
Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, blamed Ukraine’s government for creating what he called conditions for insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where separatists have bragged about shooting down at least three Ukrainian military aircraft....Whatever the cause, the news of the crashed plane, with a passenger manifest that spanned at least nine countries, elevated the insurgency into a new international crisis. The day before, the United States had slapped new sanctions on Russia for its support of the pro-Kremlin insurgency, which has brought East-West relations to their lowest point in many years.
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| Stunned: Ukrainians inspect the wreckage of MH17 as coal miners, farmers and other volunteers help with the grisly task of clearing up the crash sites after the Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the east of the country Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2698068/ |
The government of Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, is still reeling from the unexplained disappearance of Flight 370 over the Indian Ocean in March.
Flight 17, had been bound for Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, from Amsterdam with 283 passengers, including three infants, and 15 crew members. Aviation officials said the plane had been traveling an approved and heavily trafficked route over eastern Ukraine. Flight 17 was flying on a route that had remained open and active at higher altitudes throughout the conflict in Ukraine. It had been closed up to 32,000 feet, but the plane was traveling 1,000 feet above that. Hours before the crash, Russia had announced its own airspace restrictions near eastern Ukraine, closing below 32,000 feet the route Flight 17 would have taken through Russia.
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| Surveying the damage: Firefighters walk among the smoking remains of flight MH17 at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. The white flags stuck into the ground indicate to rescue workers where victims lie Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2698068/ |
Adding to Ukrainian and Western suspicions that pro-Russia separatists were culpable, Ukraine’s intelligence agency, the State Security Service, known as the S.B.U., released audio from what it said were intercepted phone calls between separatist rebels and Russian military intelligence officers on Thursday. In the audio, the separatists appeared to acknowledge shooting down a civilian plane....
Myroslava Petsa, a Ukrainian journalist in Kiev, said that the people in the audio sounded shocked by what they had found in the wreckage.
By Thursday night, American intelligence analysts were increasingly focused on a theory that rebels had used a Russian-made SA-11 surface-to-air missile system to shoot down the aircraft and operated on their own fire-control radar, outside the checks and balances of the national Ukrainian air-defense network.
“Everything we have, and it is not much, says separatists,” a senior Pentagon official said. “That said, there’s still a lot of conjecture.”
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| What remains: Part of the Malaysian Airline plane lies damaged in a field after it was shot out of the sky on Thursday Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2698068 |
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| Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko |
For months, eastern Ukraine has been the scene of a violent pro-Russia separatist uprising....Despite the turmoil, the commercial airspace over eastern Ukraine is heavily trafficked and has remained open. Questions are likely to be raised in the coming days about why the traffic line, which is controlled by Ukraine and Russia, was not closed earlier.With the news of the crash on Thursday, Ukraine declared the eastern part of the country a no-fly zone.