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Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 298 passengers and crew crashes in eastern Ukraine



 
 
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Old July 18th, 2014, 11:15 AM posted to alt.disasters.aviation,alt.obituaries,rec.travel.air
Steve Hayes[_2_]
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Default Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 298 passengers and crew crashes in eastern Ukraine

Malaysia airliner 'shot down' over Ukraine
Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 298 passengers and crew crashes in eastern
Ukraine, in apparent missile strike.

Last updated: 18 Jul 2014 05:08

A Malaysian airliner has been brought down over eastern Ukraine, killing all
298 people aboard and sharply raising the stakes in a conflict between Kiev
and pro-Moscow rebels in which Russia and the West back opposing sides.

Ukraine accused "terrorists" - fighters aiming to unite eastern Ukraine with
Russia - of shooting down the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with a Soviet-era
SA-11 ground-to-air missile as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on
Thursday.

Leaders of the rebel Donetsk People's Republic denied any involvement,
although around the same time their military commander said his forces had
downed a much smaller Ukrainian transport plane. It would be their third such
kill this week.

US Vice President Joe Biden said the downing of the plane was "not an
accident" and that the passenger jet was "apparently ... blown out of the
sky."

Burning and charred wreckage bearing the red and blue Malaysia insignia and
dozens of bodies were strewn in fields near the village of Hrabove, 40km from
the Russian border near the rebel-held regional capital of Donetsk.

Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said the plane fell in an
area controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

"The investigation will be very difficult given that it's controlled by the
rebels," he said.

Despite the shooting down of several Ukrainian military aircraft in the area
in recent months, including two this week, and renewed accusations from Kiev
that Russian forces were taking a direct part, international air lanes had
remained open.


Malaysia Airlines said that 154 Dutch citizens, 27 Australians, 43 Malaysians,
12 Indonesians, nine British, four German, four Belgian, three Filipinos and
one Canadian were onboard the aircraft.

Wreckage and bodies

Malaysia Airlines said air traffic controllers lost contact with flight MH17
at 14:15 GMT as it flew over eastern Ukraine towards the Russian border, bound
for Asia.

Flight tracking data indicated it was at its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet
[10km] when it disappeared.

That would be beyond the range of smaller rockets used by the rebels to bring
down helicopters and other low-flying Ukrainian military aircraft - but not of
the SA-11 system which a Ukrainian official accused Russia of supplying to the
rebels.

"I was working in the field on my tractor when I heard the sound of a plane
and then a bang," one local man told Reuters news agency at Hrabove, known in
Russian as Grabovo.

"Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two. There was thick black
smoke."

An emergency worker said at least 100 bodies had been found so far and that
debris was spread over 15km.

People were scouring the area for the black box flight recorders and
separatists were later quoted as saying they had found one.

"MH17 is not an incident or catastrophe, it is a terrorist attack," Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko tweeted. He has stepped up his military campaign
against the rebels since a ceasefire late last month failed to produce any
negotiations.

Ukrainian Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook:
"Just now, over Torez, terrorists using a Buk anti-aircraft system kindly
given to them by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin have shot down a civilian
airliner flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur."

The Buk is a 1970s truck-mounted, radar-guided missile system, codenamed SA-11
Gadfly by Cold War NATO adversaries. It fires a 5.7-metre, 55-kg missiles for
up to 28km.

Rebel accusation

A rebel leader said Ukrainian forces shot the airliner down and that rebel
forces did not have weaponry capable of hitting a plane flying 10km up.
Ukrainian officials said their military was not involved in the incident.

The military commander of the rebels, a Russian named Igor Strelkov, had
written on his social media page at 13:37 GMT, half an hour before the last
reported contact with MH17, that his forces had brought down an Antonov An-26,
a turboprop transport plane of type used by Ukraine's forces, in the same
area.

Putin said Ukraine bore responsibility for the crash, but he did not address
the question of who might have shot it down and did not accuse Ukraine of
doing so.

"This tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the
military actions had not been renewed in southeast Ukraine,'' Putin said,
according to a Kremlin statement issued early on Friday. "And, certainly, the
state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful
tragedy.''

The loss of MH-17 is the second disaster for Malaysia Airlines this year,
following the mysterious loss of flight MH370. It disappeared in March with
239 passengers and crew on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe...147473508.html


 




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