PETALING JAYA: A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft is believed to have been shot down over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border last night, and all 295 people on board are believed killed.
MH17, was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 280 passengers and 15 crew, when it is believed to have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile at 33,000ft around 20 miles before entering Russian airspace.
The plane had taken off from Amsterdam at 6.30pm Malaysian time and had been scheduled to arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at 6.10am today. However, Mas lost contact with the plane at 9.20pm last night.
The Interfax news agency reported that the aircraft went missing near Donetsk, where pro-Russian rebels have been fighting Ukrainian government forces.
A separate unnamed source in the Ukrainian security apparatus, quoted by Interfax as saying the plane disappeared from radar at a height of 10,000 metres after which it came down near the town of Shakhtyorsk.
According to Interfax news agency, the plane came down 50km short of entering Russian airspace.
"It began to drop..... afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory,” the agency quoted an unnamed source as saying.
TV pictures from the scene showed a pall of smoke billowing into the sky apparently from the stricken aircraft.
Dozens of bodies were scattered around the smouldering wreckage of a passenger jet that crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, a Reuters reporter said.
An emergency services rescue worker said at least 100 bodies had so far been found at the scene, near the village of Grabovo, and that debris from the wreckage was scattered across an area up to about 15 km in diameter.
Broken pieces of the wings were marked with blue and red paint - the same colours as the emblem of the Malaysian airline.
This is the second tragic incident involving MAS, within months of another Boeing 777-200ER aircraft MH370 going missing with 239 passengers and crew on March 8, an hour after departing Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at 12.41am bound for Beijing.
At press time, a MAS spokesperson was quoted as saying the airline could not confirm the news report by an international news agency and was still checking on it.
“Once we get the details, we will keep in touch with the media,” she said.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak tweeted @NajibRazak:” I am shocked by reports than an MHplane crashed. We are launching an immediate investigation.”
Meanwhile, military sources told theSun that preliminary reports received from their foreign counterparts revealed that prior to the discovery of the crash, pro-Russian rebels had claimed they had downed a Ukrainian civil aircraft with missiles.
As there were no other air crashes reported in the country, it is believed that Flight MH17 may have been a mistaken target.
Image file:
Caption:
A general view shows the site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 17, 2014. REUTERS
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Image file:
Caption:
The site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash is seen near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 17, 2014. REUTERS
Position:
Top