Malaysian Flight Shot Down Over Ukraine

A Ukrainian official said a passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down Thursday over a town in the east of the country, and Malaysian Airlines tweeted that it lost contact with one of its flights over Ukrainian airspace. Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on his Facebook page that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet. He also said it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 72,000 feet. As plumes of black smoke rose up near a rebel-held village of Grabovo in eastern Ukraine, an Associated Press journalist counted at least 22 bodies at the crash site. The plane appeared to have broken up before impact and the burning wreckage - including body parts and the belongings of passengers - was scattered over a wide area. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the downing an act of terrorism and called for an international investigation into the crash. The government of Ukraine said in a statement Thursday afternoon that it has evidence that the Russian military was involved in the crash. "The plane was shot down, because the Russian air defense systems was affording protection to Russian mercenaries and terrorists in this area," the statement said. Ukraine pro-Russia rebels said they didn't shoot down the airliner and blamed Ukrainian armed forces.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-crashes-in-ukraine/
http://echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/1361754-echo/