Kuala Lumpur/Kiev: All 295 people on board a Malaysia Airlines plane were killed on Thursday after the jet was shot down by “terrorists” over war-torn eastern Ukraine near the Russian border, nearly four months after the mysterious disappearance of MH370 in the Indian Ocean.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew. Malaysia Airlines confirmed that it received notification from Ukrainian Air Traffic Control that it had lost contact with Flight MH17 at 1415 GMT (8:45 IST) at 30km from Tamak waypoint, approximately 50km from the Russia-Ukraine border.
“Nearly 300 people died when a Malaysia Airlines Boeing- 777 crashed in eastern Ukraine,” an advisor to the Ukrainain Interior Minister, Anton Herashchenko, said.
“It was flying at the altitude of 10,000 meters. 280 passengers and 15 crew members died,” he said in a Facebook post. “The aircraft was shot down over Ukraine by terrorists operating a Buk surface-to-air missile system,” he said.
Witnesses from the town of Torez in the rebellion-wracked Donetsk region of Ukraine told RIA Novosti news agency that the plane wreckage and dead bodies have been found in the area. At least several dozen bodies were found scattered around the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane in eastern Ukraine, witnesses said, adding the debris of the plane covered an area of about one square kilometer.
The plane disappeared from the radar and teams from the emergency services have reached the scene. Burning aircraft wreckage and bodies strewn on the ground were seen at the village of Grabovo, some 40 kms from the Russian border in an area where pro-Russian rebels are active.
Malaysia Airlines confirmed on Twitter, “Malaysian Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position of the plane was over Ukrainian airspace”.
Malaysia’s Star newspaper quoting sources said the plane was “shot down” while cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the jetliner may have been shot down over his country’s airspace.
“This incident is not a catastrophe. It is a terrorist act,” he said. Ukrainian officials have accused pro-Russian rebels of being responsible for shooting down the plane.
But the press service of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic claimed the jet was downed by a missile fired from a Ukrainian air force Su-25 combat jet, a charge denied by Ukraine. “We do not exclude that the plane was shot down and confirm that the Ukraine Armed Forces did not fire at any targets in the sky,” Poroshenko said in a statement posted on the president’s website. (PTI)