Ukraine: Malaysian Jet with 295 on Board Shot Down near Russia Border

Local Editor

A Malaysian passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down Thursday over a town in eastern Ukraine, an official said.

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister, said on his Facebook page the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 22,000 meters.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for his part said that the jet may have been shot down.
"We do not exclude that the plane was shot down and confirm that the Ukraine Armed Forces did not fire at any targets in the sky," Poroshenko said in a statement posted on the president's website.

Later, the president's spokesman said Poroshenko believes that pro-Russian insurgents had shot down the Malaysian Airlines jet, and views it as a "terrorist act."
"Poroshenko on the downed plane: this incident is not a catastrophe. It is a terrorist act," the spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko posted on his official Twitter account.
Rebels fighting central Kiev authorities claimed that the airliner that had been shot down by a Ukrainian jet.

"Witnesses watching the flight of the Boeing 777 passenger plane saw it being attacked by a battle plane of the Ukrainian forces," the government of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic said in a statement.
"After that the passenger plane split in two in the air and fell on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic," said the statement, adding that the Ukrainian jet was shot down afterwards.

Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed that it "has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow."
Shocked local residents struggled to take in the scene of the carnage and said that remnants of the jet had been found in a village some 9 kilometers from the center of the crash site.
Earlier, Russian and Ukrainian news agencies quoted aviation and security sources as saying that the airliner was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and that it had "crashed" in east Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels are battling government forces.

The Boeing passenger liner came down close to the town of Shaktarsk in the rebellion-wracked region of Donetsk after disappearing from the radar and teams from the emergency services were trying to reach the scene, an unnamed security source told Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
"I am shocked by reports that an MH plane crashed," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on his Twitter feed.

"We are launching an immediate investigation."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barack Obama spoke about the Malaysian passenger incident, the Kremlin said Thursday.
"The Russian leader informed the US president about an air-traffic controllers' report that came just before their phone conversation that a Malaysian plane crashed in Ukraine," the Kremlin said in a statement.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said on Twitter there's no confirmation that Thursday's plane was shot down. He said he has instructed the country's military to check and get confirmation.

It was the second time that a Malaysia Airlines plane had gone missing in less than six months. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It has not been found, but the search has been concentrated in the Indian Ocean far west of Australia.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team