Airliner shot down, Ukraine says

No sign of survivors; combatants swap blame

People inspect the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Hrabove, Ukraine, on Thursday, July 17, 2014. Ukraine said a passenger plane was shot down Thursday as it flew over the country, and both the government and the pro-Russia separatists fighting in the region denied any responsibility for downing the plane.
People inspect the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Hrabove, Ukraine, on Thursday, July 17, 2014. Ukraine said a passenger plane was shot down Thursday as it flew over the country, and both the government and the pro-Russia separatists fighting in the region denied any responsibility for downing the plane.

HRABOVE, Ukraine -- A Malaysia Airlines passenger plane carrying 298 people was shot down over war-torn eastern Ukraine on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, and both the government and the pro-Russia separatists fighting in the region denied any responsibility for downing the aircraft.

The village of Hrabove, at the wreckage site 25 miles from the Russian border, is under the control of pro-Russia separatists, and the area has seen severe fighting between the two sides in recent days.

A Russian news report said pro-Russia rebels intend to call a three-day cease-fire to allow for recovery efforts and an investigation into the crash of the Boeing 777-200ER, which had been traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia Airlines said Ukrainian aviation authorities told the company they had lost contact with Flight MH17, which was carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, about 20 miles from Tamak waypoint. The waypoint is about 30 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.

Officials said more than half of those aboard the plane were Dutch citizens, along with passengers from Australia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines and Canada. The home countries of nearly 50 were not confirmed.

Secretary of State John Kerry said late Thursday that authorities still were trying to determine whether any Americans had been on the plane.

Several passengers were world-renowned researchers heading to an international AIDS conference in Australia, officials said today. Among them was the former president of the International AIDS Society, Joep Lange, a well-known HIV researcher from the Netherlands, opposition leader Bill Shorten said in parliament.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who had been attending a European Union summit in Brussels, headed back to the Netherlands to deal with the crash.

After the crash, the cockpit and one of the turbines lay at a distance of more than a half-mile apart. Residents said the tail had landed about 6 miles farther away. Pieces of charred bodies and bones were spread across the field. Rescue workers planted sticks with white flags in spots where they found body parts.

Some journalists attempting to reach the crash site were detained briefly by rebel militiamen.

There was no indication there were any survivors. Malaysia's prime minister said the plane didn't make any distress call before it went down, and that the flight route was declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said Malaysia was unable to verify "the cause of this tragedy but we must, and we will, find out precisely what happened to this flight."

"No stone will be left unturned," he added. "If it transpires that the plane was, indeed, shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must be brought to justice."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for an international investigation into the crash. He insisted that his forces did not shoot down the plane.

"I would like to note that we are calling this not an incident, not a catastrophe, but a terrorist act," Poroshenko said.

Ukraine's security services produced what they said were two intercepted telephone conversations that they said showed rebels were responsible. In the first call, the security services said, rebel commander Igor Bezler tells a Russian military intelligence officer that rebel forces shot down a plane.

In the second, two rebel fighters -- one of them at the scene of the crash -- say the rocket attack was carried out by a unit of insurgents about 15 miles north of the crash site.

Neither recording could be independently verified.

Questions begin

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on his Facebook page the plane was flying at 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile from a Buk launcher, which can fire up to an altitude of 72,000 feet. He said only that his information was based on "intelligence."

Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow in Russian studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said both Ukrainian and Russian forces have SA-17 missile systems -- also known as Buk ground-to-air launcher systems.

Rebels had bragged recently about having acquired Buk systems.

Sutyagin said Russia had supplied separatist rebels with military hardware, but he had seen no evidence "of the transfer of that type of system from Russia." The weapons that the rebels are known to have do not have the capacity to reach beyond 14,750 feet.

American intelligence authorities believe a surface-to-air missile took down the passenger jet, a U.S. official said, but the Obama administration was still scrambling to confirm who launched the strike and whether there were American citizens killed in the crash.

Vice President Joe Biden said the disaster was "not an accident" and described the Malaysia Airlines plane as having been "blown out of the sky."

Among the unanswered questions was whether a missile was launched from the Russian or Ukrainian side of the border they share, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly by name and insisted on anonymity. But the official said U.S. intelligence assessments suggest it is more likely that pro-Russia separatists or the Russians rather than Ukrainian government forces shot down the plane.

The U.S. planned to send a team of experts to Ukraine to assist with the investigation.

A global air safety group said an international coalition of countries should lead the investigation of the crash. Safety experts say they're concerned that because the plane crashed in area of Ukraine that is in dispute, political considerations could affect the investigation.

Kenneth Quinn of the Flight Safety Foundation said only "an independent, multinational investigation can truly get to the bottom of it without political interference."

Around the time the plane crashed, Russian media quoted witnesses as saying they saw a plane being hit by what they thought was a rocket.

Donetsk separatist leader Andrei Purgin said that he was certain that Ukrainian troops had shot the plane down, but gave no explanation or proof for his statement.

Purgin said he did not know whether rebel forces owned Buk missile launchers, but said even if they did, they had no fighters capable of operating them.

Finger-pointing

President Barack Obama called the crash a "terrible tragedy" and talked about it on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin said Putin "informed the U.S. president of the report from air traffic controllers that the Malaysian plane had crashed on Ukrainian territory" without giving further details about their call. The White House confirmed the call.

Later, Putin said Ukraine bears responsibility for the crash. But he didn't address the question of who might have shot down the plane and didn't 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 today. "And, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy."

Ukraine's United Nations ambassador said the Malaysian airliner would not have crashed if Russia hadn't given pro-Russia separatists a sophisticated missile system that can hit planes.

Yuriy Sergeyev said that Russia bears responsibility for the crash, along with the separatists, whom he called "terrorists."

"It could not have happened if Russia has not supplied the terrorists with sophisticated weaponry, with tanks, with artillery and with this missile system," Sergeyev said.

Sergeyev also said the Ukrainian government is collecting "more proof that the terrorists stand behind [the crash] and Russia stands behind the terrorists."

He said the government is waiting for confirmation "from those who have satellite facilities."

Britain has asked for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Ukraine, which was set for 10 a.m. today.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "there is clearly a need for a full and transparent international investigation" into the plane crash in Ukraine.

"I offer my deep condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims and people of Malaysia," Ban added.

Aviation authorities in several countries, including the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States, had issued warnings not to fly over parts of Ukraine before Thursday's crash, but many airliners had continued to use the route because "it is a shorter route, which means less fuel and therefore less money," said aviation expert Norman Shanks.

Within hours of Thursday's crash, several airlines, including Lufthansa, Delta and KLM, released statements saying they were avoiding parts of Ukrainian airspace.

There have been several disputes over planes being shot down over eastern Ukraine in recent days.

On Wednesday evening, a Ukrainian fighter jet was shot down by an air-to-air missile from a Russian plane, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday, adding to what Kiev says is mounting evidence that Moscow is directly supporting the separatist insurgents. Ukraine Security Council spokesman Andrei Lysenko said the pilot of the Sukhoi-25 jet hit by the air-to-air missile was forced to bail after his jet was shot down.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said at U.N. headquarters in New York on Thursday that Russia did not shoot down the Ukrainian fighter jet on Wednesday. "We didn't do it," Churkin said.

Moscow denies Western claims that it is supporting the separatists or sowing unrest in its neighbor.

Pro-Russia rebels, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for strikes Wednesday on two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the second jet was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile, but added the pilot was unscathed and landed his plane safely.

Earlier this week, Ukraine said a military transport plane was shot down Monday over eastern Ukraine by a missile fired from Russian territory.

Flights that were airborne when the Malaysia Airlines jet crashed have been rerouted, transportation officials said.

The Malaysia Airlines plane was delivered to the company on July 30, 1997, according to Flightglobal's Ascend Online Fleets. It has more than 43,000 hours of flight time and 6,950 takeoffs and landings.

Thursday's crash was the second time that a Malaysia Airlines plane was lost in less than six months. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It has not yet been found, and the search has been concentrated in the Indian Ocean far west of Australia.

In Kuala Lumpur, several relatives of those onboard the Malaysian airliner went to the international airport.

A distraught Akmar Mohamad Noor, 67, said her older sister was on her way to visit the family in Kuala Lumpur for the first time in five years.

"She called me just before she boarded the plane and said, 'See you soon,'" Noor said.

Information for this article was contributed by Peter Leonard, Scott Mayerowitz, Jill Lawless, Matthew Knight, Laura Mills, Jim Heintz, Darlene Superville, Mike Corder, Eileen Ng, Satish Cheney, Edith M. Lederer, Julie Pace, Lolita C. Baldor, Nedra Pickler, Robert Burns, Joan Lowy, Josh Lederman and Kristen Gelineau of The Associated Press and by Neil MacFarquhar, David M. Herszenhorn, Eric Schmitt, Marcus Mabry, Peter Baker, Rick Gladstone, Sabrina Tavernise, Noah Sneider, Andrew E. Kramer, Michael D. Shear, Thomas Erdbrink, C.J. Chivers and Masha Goncharova of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/18/2014

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