Pro-Russia rebels downed Malaysian plane: Ukraine

HRABOVE (Ukraine) — Ukraine accused pro-Russian separatists of shooting down a Malaysian jetliner with 298 people aboard, sharply escalating the crisis and threatening to draw both East and West deeper into the conflict. The rebels denied downing the aircraft.

American intelligence authorities believe a surface-to-air missile brought the plane down yesterday (July 17) but were still working on who fired the missile and whether it came from the Russian or Ukrainian side of the border, a United States official said.

Bodies, debris and burning wreckage of the Boeing 777 were strewn over a field near the rebel-held village of Hrabove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, about 40km from the Russian border, where fighting has raged for months.

US Vice President Joe Biden described the plane as having been “blown out of the sky”.

The aircraft appeared to have broken up before impact, and there were large pieces of the plane that bore the red, white and blue markings of Malaysia Airlines — now familiar worldwide because of the carrier’s still-missing jetliner from earlier this year.

The cockpit and one of the turbines lay at a distance of one km from one another. Residents said the tail was about 10km further away. Rescue workers planted sticks with white flags in spots where they found human remains.

There was no sign of any survivors from Flight 17, which took off shortly after noon yesterday from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 283 passengers, including three infants, and a crew of 15. Malaysia’s prime minister said there was no distress call before the plane went down and that the flight route was declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called it an “act of terrorism” and demanded an international investigation. He insisted his forces did not shoot down the plane.

Ukraine’s security services produced what they said were two intercepted telephone conversations that 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 crash scene — say the rocket attack was carried out by a unit of insurgents about 25km north of the site.

Neither recording could be independently verified.

Earlier in the week, the rebels had claimed responsibility for shooting down two Ukrainian military planes.

President Barack Obama called the crash a “terrible tragedy” and spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Mr Poroshenko. Britain asked for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Ukraine.

Later, Mr 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 south-east Ukraine,” Mr 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.”

At the UN, Ukrainian Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev told the AP that Russia gave the separatists a sophisticated missile system and thus Moscow bears responsibility, along with the rebels.

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.

“We owe it as well to the families of the dead to find out exactly what has happened and exactly who is responsible,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in Parliament today. “As things stand, this looks less like an accident than a crime. And if so, the perpetrators must be brought to justice.”

The different nationalities of the dead would bring Ukraine’s conflict to parts of the globe that were never touched by it before.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “horrified” by the crash, and said the US was prepared to help with an international investigation.

Ukraine’s crisis began after pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych was driven from office in February by a protest movement among citizens angry about endemic corruption and seeking closer ties with the European Union. Russia later annexed the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine, and pro-Russians in the country’s eastern regions began occupying government buildings and pressing for independence. Moscow denies Western charges it is supporting the separatists or sowing unrest.

Mr Kenneth Quinn of the Flight Safety Foundation said an international coalition of countries should lead the investigation. Safety experts said they are concerned that because the plane crashed in area of Ukraine that is in dispute, political considerations could affect the investigation.

The RIA-Novosti agency quoted rebel leader Alexander Borodai as saying talks were underway with Ukrainian authorities on calling a short truce for humanitarian reasons. He said international organisations would be allowed into the conflict-plagued region.

Within hours of yesterday’s crash, several airlines said they were avoiding parts of Ukrainian airspace.

Malaysia Airlines said Ukrainian aviation authorities told the company they had lost contact with Flight 17 about 30km from Tamak waypoint, which is 50km from the Russia-Ukraine border.

A US official said American intelligence authorities believe the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile but were still working to determine additional details about the crash, including who fired the missile and whether it came from the Russian or Ukraine side of the border.

But American intelligence assessments suggest it is more likely pro-Russian separatists or the Russians rather than Ukrainian government forces shot down the plane, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

The US has sophisticated technologies that can detect missile launches, including the identification of heat from the rocket engine.

Mr Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on his Facebook page the plane was flying at about 10km when it was hit by a missile from a Buk launcher, which can fire up to an altitude of 22km. He said only that his information was based on “intelligence”.

Mr 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. AP