A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 295 aboard crashed approximately 30 miles from the Russian Ukraine boarder, a region engulfed by fighting among pro-Russian separatist and Ukrainian forces.
The Malaysian Airline Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when the airline lost contact with the jetliner around 10:30 AM. According to the airline, the flight tracker indicated that the plane was at it’s cruising altitude of 33,000 feet when it disappeared.
The last known location was over Ukrainian airspace.
Reporters arriving on the scene near the town of Grabovo described dozen of lifeless, mostly intact bodies, scattered around a wheat field with pieces of the jetliner scattered across a road lines with fire engines and emergency vehicles. No one survived the crash.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko feels a “terrorist act” was the cause of the jets crash, according to his secretary per Reuters.com. It was confirmed that a surface to air missile brought down the plane on Thursday.
“Proshenko thinks this of the plane that was brought down: it is not an incident, not a catastrophe, but a terrorist act.”
Poroshenko expressed in a statement that “This is the third tragic incident in recent days after Ukrainian military An-26 and Su-25 jets were shot down from russian territory. We don’t rule out that this plane was also shot down, and we stress that the Ukrainian military don’t take any action to destroy targets in the air. The Ukraine president has also called from an immediate investigation of the incident.
Donetsk People’s Republic, the pro-Russian separatist movement in eastern Ukraine had denied involvement in the downing of MH17.
Tatyana Dvoryadkina, co-chair of the DPR expressed to gazeta.ru that, “We do not have any idea what this is about and who shot down the plane. We’re heading there now to investigate everything independently.”
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian president, Vladimir Putin, called allegations that Russia had been involved in the downing of the jetliner “stupidly.” Peskov also expressed to The Guardian that the Kremlin will not make any further comments on the tragedy because “no one knows” who is responsible.
President Obama claims, “we are working to determine if there were American Citizens on board MH17.”
Back in March, Malaysia Airlines had mysteriously lost contact with another Boeing 777 when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
