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| The crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Boeing 777 that had been flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over Ukraine. Photograph: Dzhavakhadze Zurab/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis |
The White House stopped short of directly blaming Russia for the plane’s destruction but linked its remarks on the disaster to the Kremlin’s support for separatists in Ukraine, urging Vladimir Putin’s government to stop inflaming the situation in the country and take "concrete steps" towards de-escalation.
Leaders from around the world reacted with shock and anger to the shooting down of the jet. The US said it had intelligence showing a surface-to-air missile was used.
The former US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made some of the most potent remarks in a television interview, saying there were strong indications Russian-backed militia were to blame and action was needed to "put [Vladimir] Putin on notice that he has gone too far and we are not going to stand idly by".
Clinton called for the EU to increase sanctions on Russia, while the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott called on Russia to explain the disaster as it “now seems certain it’s been brought down by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile”. There were 28 Australians on board the plane, along with 154 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians, nine passengers believed to be from the UK, four each from Germany and Belgium, three from the Philippines, one Canadian and one from New Zealand. The nationalities of 39 passengers had not yet been verified. Australia announced a national day of mourning and dipped flags in the capital, Canberra, to half mast.
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said: "We do believe that there were British nationals on board the flight. We are working through passenger data, cross-checking it and referencing it to establish exactly the numbers and identities of those British nationals."
A group of international HIV/Aids experts flying to Melbourne were among those killed.
The Malaysian president, Najib Razak, said international investigators must have full access to the crash site and the terrible and deeply shocking news marked “a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year, for Malaysia”, referring to the earlier disappearance without a trace of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Najib said the government of Ukraine had pledged a full and independent investigation and would negotiate with rebels to ensure a humanitarian corridor to the crash site. He said any wrongdoers must be held responsible and did not mention receiving a phone call of condolence from Vladimir Putin. Russia said earlier that its president had called to the Malaysian leader "to convey his deepest sympathy and support" to the victims’ families.
Najib said: “We must – and we will – find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone can be left unturned.
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| A Malaysian mother reacts after seeing her daughter's name on the list of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines MH17. Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters |
Putin has reportedly ordered Russian military and civilian agencies to co-operate with any investigation but also said Ukraine has to take responsibility for the incident.
The huge loss of life threatens to have wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences, coming just after the US imposed further sanctions on Russia for continuing to provide weapons to the rebels. Defence and security experts said the Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system, known to be in the hands of pro-Russia fighters in Ukraine, was most likely used.
"This was not an incident, this was not a catastrophe, this was a terrorist act," said Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko.
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, said the plane appeared to have been "blown out of the sky", while the Ukrainian security services released an audio recording said to be rebel commanders discussing the fact that their forces were responsible with Russian officers.
The jet was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday when it was blown apart and fell in a shower of fiery wreckage over the village of Grabovo, part of the area controlled by pro-Russia separatists.
The European air traffic control body, Eurocontrol, said Ukrainian authorities had banned aircraft from flying at 32,000ft or below and the doomed aircraft had been cruising above that, at 33,000ft – however this apparently still left it within range of the sophisticated surface-to-air weaponry that pro-Russia forces have been using recently to target Ukrainian military aircraft. All civilian flights have now been barred from the area of eastern Ukraine.
Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said that if MH17 had been shot down it amounted to an "unspeakable crime" and a full international investigation must be allowed to take place. She said pro-Russia rebels, said to have retrieved the plane's black box flight recording equipment, must hand it over to authorities.
The US president referred to the "terrible tragedy" and said efforts were under way to determine whether Americans had been killed. "The world is watching," Barack Obama said. "The United States will offer whatever assistance we can to determine what happened and why." John Kerry, the secretary of state, made a statement of condolence and called for a "credible international investigation".
The field next to the tiny hamlet was a scene of charred earth and twisted metal as shocked local people milled around the scene. Body parts belonging to the 298 on board were strewn around. The body of what appeared to be a young woman had been flung about 500m from the centre of the crash.
US government officials confirmed to media outlets that a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane. US intelligence was reportedly still working to determine the exact location from which the missile was fired, and whether it was on the Russian or the Ukrainian side of the border.
Rebels in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics have shot down several Ukrainian planes and helicopters in recent weeks. But they insisted they had no part in the downing of MH17, claiming instead that Ukrainian fire was responsible.
Ukraine's SBU security services released a recording, which could not immediately be verified, of what it said were rebel commanders saying they had shot down a plane and then discovering with horror it had been a civilian jet.
On the ground in Grabovo a strong smell of aviation fuel and burnt rubber hung in the air as dozens of pro-Russian separatist fighters milled around the area in which workers from the emergency services were sifting through the wreckage. A dozen fire engines were on the scene.
One local resident, Alexander, had been working in a field a few hundred metres from the crash site and thought the aircraft was going to fall on top of him. Another farmer said he was on his tractor when he heard a loud bang. "Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two – there was thick black smoke," he said.
In a conflict that has not been short of dreadful twists, this was by far the most shocking and most gruesome to date. The 298 people aboard MH17 had no connection to the fighting except that their international flight was travelling through airspace above the battle zone.
Questions were raised as to why Malaysia Airlines had continued to fly over such a volatile region, where separatists were known to be shooting at aircraft. Qantas, the Australian carrier, said it had been steering clear of the area by 400 nautical miles for several months. Malaysia Airlines said after the crash that it had altered its flight paths and other airlines either did likewise or emphasised they had already been taking alternative routes.
"With immediate effect, all European flights operated by Malaysia Airlines will be taking alternative routes avoiding the usual route," said a statement from the airline. It added: "The usual flight route was earlier declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. International Air Transportation Association has stated that the airspace the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions."
Throughout the Ukraine conflict the versions of violent incidents provided by Kiev and the Donetsk rebels have diverged wildly, with each side blaming the other for loss of life and the shelling of residential areas.
Now, with such a huge and unexpected loss of life, the stakes are immeasurably higher, and both sides again rushed to claim the other was at fault.
Those blaming pro-Russia rebels for the attack pointed to a post on a social media site attributed to a top rebel commander which claimed to have downed a Ukrainian transport plane around the same time as the first reports of MH17's disappearance surfaced. The post was later deleted.
The US and EU have heavily criticised Russia for providing the separatists in eastern Ukraine with logistical and military support, leading to a new set of White House sanctions against Russian companies, introduced on Wednesday, as rhetoric coming out of both Washington and Moscow has led to talk of a new cold war. Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Guardian that any allegations of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash were "stupidity".
He said the Kremlin would not make a further statement because "no one knows" who is responsible.
Asked about the possibility of further US sanctions, Peskov said he could not rule it out: "The United States has recently been conducting a very nonconstructive policy and their actions are very unpredictable," he said.
Putin himself, who on Thursday returned to Russia from a summit of the Brics nations in Brazil, informed Barack Obama about the incident.
"The Russian leader informed the US president of the report from air traffic controllers that the Malaysian plane had crashed on Ukrainian territory, which had arrived immediately before the phone call," said a statement released by the Kremlin.
According to the statement, the pair spent most of the conversation discussing the deterioration of US-Russian relations, and Putin expressed his "serious disappointment" over the latest round of US sanctions against Russian companies.
Later Putin chaired a meeting on the Russian economy which began with a minute's silence and laid the blame for the crash at Ukraine's door: "There is no doubt that the nation over whose airspace this happened bears responsibility for the terrible tragedy," he said.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, tweeted: "I'm shocked and saddened by the Malaysian air disaster. Officials from across Whitehall are meeting to establish the facts."
The crash came four months after another Malaysia Airlines flight, MH370, vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, two-thirds of them Chinese citizens. It has yet to be found despite a huge search.
The first rumours of another incomprehensible tragedy for the airline, this time in Ukraine, came as video appeared from villages nearby showing huge plumes of smoke rising into the air, with aviation sources telling a local wire agency that a plane had been downed.
The first official confirmation came when Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, wrote on his Facebook page that the plane had crashed in Ukrainian territory after being hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.
Malaysia Airlines soon confirmed the worst, announcing via its Twitter feed: "Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace."
Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military specialist at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, agreed that the plane would almost certainly have been shot with a Buk, a vehicle-mounted missile system first developed in the Soviet era. The Malaysian aircraft,was beyond the range of Manpads – shoulder-launched missiles. Kalashnikov-carrying Russian sympathisers in Ukraine would not have had the expertise to fire them and would have needed either specialists who had "volunteered" their services from Russia or locally recruited specialists, he said, noting that the rebels had been firing at Ukrainian aircraft over the last week.
The Associated Press said one of its journalists had seen a similar launcher near the town of Snizhne earlier on Thursday.
Russia's state-owned Channel One avoided speculation of who might have been behind the plane crash in its first bulletins on the subject, while the Kremlin-friendly Life News, whose reporters were first on the scene, said it was likely to have been brought down by Ukrainian fire, claiming that the rebels did not have any missile systems with the capacity to down a plane at that altitude.
However a report on the website of Russian state television from late June described how the rebels in Donetsk had taken control of a Ukrainian missile defence facility that was equipped with Buk systems. The report said that the rebels planned to "defend the sky over Donetsk" using the missiles.
On Thursday afternoon a social media site attributed to Igor Strelkov, a Russian citizen who has emerged as the commander of rebel forces in Donetsk, announced that the rebels had shot down an An-26 Ukrainian transport plane, and also that there was "information about a second plane". The post was later removed.
Audio was circulated on social media, apparently released by Ukrainian security services, purporting to be an intercepted conversation of pro-Russia rebels confirming they had shot down a civilian jet.
The conversation is apparently between a group leader and his superior and suggests that they initially thought they had brought down a military aircraft but later realised their error.
The group leader, "Demon", tells his boss: "A plane has just been shot down. [It was] 'Miner's' group. It crashed outside Enakievo. Our men went to search for and photograph it. It's smouldering."
After his men apparently inspect the crash site, Demon reports back. "Kazakhs from the Chernunkhino checkpoint shot down the plane. The plane disintegrated in mid-air … they found the first body. It's a civilian."
He carries on: "I mean. It's definitely a civilian aircraft."
His superior, nicknamed "Greek", asks him: "Were there many people?"
Demon replies: "A fuckton. The debris rained right into the yards."
Greek asks: "What's the aircraft?" and is told: "I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't reached the main section. I only looked at where the bodies began to fall. There are remains of chair mounts, the chairs, the bodies."
Greek asks: "Any weapons there?" and Demon says: "None at all. Civilian things, medical stuff, towels, toilet paper." "Any documents?" asks Greek, and Demon, perhaps realising what has just happened, replies: "Yes, an Indonesian student from Thomson university [in the US]."
The Guardian
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