A Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has crashed in eastern Ukraine. There were 280 passengers and 15 crew members on board.
Ukrainian Interior Minister said all on board are dead and that the plane was shot down by Russian ground-to-air anti-aircraft missiles at 32,000 feet and at 500mph.
The plane, a Boeing 777, came down near the city of Donetsk, which is a border between Russia and Ukraine where a Ukrainian transport plane was shot down at 21,000 feet on Monday July 13th and a military jet shot down last week from the Russian side of the border.
The Interior Minister said pro-Russian separatists have been hunting down their planes for weeks. 6 Ukrainian military jets have been shot down in the last few months by the Russians. There's been military conflict between Ukraine and Russia for a while. And now they are shooting down passenger planes? The plane departed Amsterdam at 12.30pm and went down around 4.30pm. See photos from the crash after the cut...
The BUK surface-to-air missile system (like this one) that is believed to have shot down flight MH17 is an old Soviet-built weapon designed to engage light aircraft, cruise missiles and drones
The flight on the tarmac of Amsterdam airport just hours before it was shot down over Ukraine
As it departed.
The Interior Minister said pro-Russian separatists have been hunting down their planes for weeks. 6 Ukrainian military jets have been shot down in the last few months by the Russians. There's been military conflict between Ukraine and Russia for a while. And now they are shooting down passenger planes? The plane departed Amsterdam at 12.30pm and went down around 4.30pm. See photos from the crash after the cut...
The BUK surface-to-air missile system (like this one) that is believed to have shot down flight MH17 is an old Soviet-built weapon designed to engage light aircraft, cruise missiles and drones
The flight on the tarmac of Amsterdam airport just hours before it was shot down over Ukraine
As it departed.
The United States has concluded the Malaysian airline was shot down, a senior U.S. official told CNN's Barbara Starr. One radar system saw a surface-to-air missile system turn on and track an aircraft right before the plane went down Thursday, according to the official. A second system saw a heat signature at the time the airliner was hit, the official said. The United States is analyzing the trajectory of the missile to try to learn where the attack came from
