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| Fire engines arrive at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine, as the sun sets Thursday, July 17, 2014. Ukraine said a passenger plane carrying 295 people 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
(AP) -- Ukraine accused pro-Russian separatists of shooting down a
Malaysian jetliner with 298 people aboard Thursday, 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 but were still working on who fired the missile and whether
it came from the Russian or Ukrainian side of the border, a U.S.
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 40
kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border, where fighting has raged
for months.
U.S. 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 kilometer
(more than a half-mile) from one another. Residents said the tail was
about 10 kilometers (six miles) farther 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 Thursday 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.
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 25 kilometers (15 miles) 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 Poroshenko. Britain
asked for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Ukraine.
Later,
Putin said Ukraine bore responsibility for the crash, but he didn't
address the question of who might have shot it down 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 Friday. "And, certainly, the state over
whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful
tragedy."
At the United Nations, 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.
The different
nationalities of the dead would bring Ukraine's conflict to parts of the
globe that were never touched by it before.
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.
Kenneth
Quinn of the Flight Safety Foundation said an international coalition
of countries should lead the investigation. 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.
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 organizations would be
allowed into the conflict-plagued region.
Some journalists trying to reach the crash site were detained briefly by rebel militiamen, who were nervous and aggressive.
Aviation
authorities in several countries, including the FAA in the United
States, had issued warnings not to fly over parts of Ukraine prior to
Thursday's crash, but many carriers, including cash-strapped Malaysia
Airlines, 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 said they were avoiding parts of Ukrainian airspace.
Malaysia
Airlines said Ukrainian aviation authorities told the company they had
lost contact with Flight 17 at 1415 GMT (10 a.m. EDT) about 30
kilometers (20 miles) from Tamak waypoint, which is 50 kilometers (30
miles) from the Russia-Ukraine border.
A U.S.
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 U.S. 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
authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The
U.S. has sophisticated technologies that can detect missile launches,
including the identification of heat from the rocket engine.
Anton
Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on his
Facebook page the plane was flying at about 10,000 meters (33,000 feet)
when it was hit by a missile from a Buk launcher, which can fire up to
an altitude of 22,000 meters (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 separatists with military hardware but had
seen no evidence "of the transfer of that type of system from Russia."
Earlier
Thusday, AP journalists saw a launcher that looked like a Buk missile
system near the eastern town of Snizhne, which is held by the rebels.
Poroshenko said his country's armed forces didn't shoot at any airborne targets.
"We
do not exclude that this plane was shot down, and we stress that the
Armed Forces of Ukraine did not take action against any airborne
targets," he said.
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.
Separatist leader Andrei Purgin told the
AP he was certain that Ukrainian troops had shot the plane down, but
gave no explanation or proof.
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.
In Kuala Lumpur, several relatives of those aboard the jet came to the international airport.
A
distraught Akmar Mohamad Noor, 67, said her older sister was coming to
visit the family for the first time in five years. "She called me just
before she boarded the plane and said `see you soon,'" Akmar said.
It
was the second time a Malaysia Airlines plane was lost in less than six
months. Flight 370 disappeared in March 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.
There have been several disputes over planes being shot down over eastern Ukraine in recent days.
A
Ukrainian fighter jet was shot down Wednesday by an air-to-air missile
from a Russian plane, Ukrainian authorities said, adding to what Kiev
says is mounting evidence that Moscow is directly supporting the
insurgents. Ukraine Security Council spokesman Andrei Lysenko said the
pilot of the Sukhoi-25 jet hit by the missile bailed out after his jet
was hit.
Moscow's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin denied Russia shot down the Ukrainian fighter jet.
Pro-Russia rebels claimed responsibility for strikes on two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets Wednesday.
Ukraine's Defense Ministry said the second jet was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile but the pilot landed safely.
Earlier
this week, Ukraine said a military transport plane was shot down Monday
over eastern Ukraine by a missile from Russian territory.
