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On Thursday, a Malaysian passenger aircraft carrying 295 people reportedly shot down over an eastern Ukrainian town, Anton Gerashenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, said.
Gerashenko said that the plane was at an altitude of 10,000 meters when it was struck by a missile that had been launched from a Buk launcher; Buk launchers can fire missiles to an altitude of 22,000 meters. A similar launcher was reportedly used near the Ukrainian town of Snizhne earlier in the day.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko weighed in on the situation, and said that the aircraft might have been shot down. “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”, he said.
On its Twitter account, Malaysia Airlines said that it “has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow”.
Earlier, Ukrainian and Russian news agencies quoted security and aviation sources as saying that the aircraft was flying to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, and that it had “crashed” in eastern Ukraine, where government forces and pro-Russian rebels have been entangled in clashes.
The Boeing passenger aircraft came down near the town Shaktarsk in rebellion-wrecked region of Donetsk. Before it was struck down, the plane had disappeared from the radar. According to sources, teams from emergency services are trying to reach the crash site.
According to the Donetsk government, the plane crashed near the village Grabovo, which it said is being controlled by pro-Russian separatists. The region has seen severe combat between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the recent days. According to Ukrainian authorities, a Ukrainian fighter jet was brought down by air-to-air missiles launched from a Russian plane the previous day, adding to what the Ukrainian government says is mounting evidence of Russia directly providing support to separatist insurgents.