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Malaysia Airlines Jet Crashes in Ukraine Malaysia Airlines Jet Crashes in Ukraine, May Have Been Shot Down
(35 minutes later)
MOSCOW — A Malaysia Airlines flight with nearly 300 people aboard crashed over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border on Thursday, the Ukraine government and a regional European aviation official reported, and the Interfax news agency said it had been shot down. MOSCOW — A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with nearly 300 people aboard crashed in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border on Thursday, the Ukraine government and a regional European aviation official reported, and the Interfax news agency said it had been shot down.
Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, said in a statement that he was calling for an immediate investigation of the crashed flight, a Boeing 777. He did not rule out that it might have been shot down. Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, said in a statement that he was calling for an immediate investigation of the crash. He did not rule out that it might have been shot down.
Eastern Ukraine has been roiled for months by a violent pro-Russian political separatist movement. A regional airline official said the plane had been flying at about 33,000 feet when radar trackers lost it over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border.
Malaysia Airlines said it had lost contact with a flight, MH17, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over Ukraine but offered no further details immediately. Eastern Ukraine has been roiled for months by a violent pro-Russian separatist uprising in which a number of military aircraft have been downed. But this would be the first commercial airline disaster resulting from the hostilities in Ukraine.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister, responded to reports that the aircraft had disappeared and might have been shot down by posting a series of terse messages on Twitter: “Monitoring this closely,” said one. In another, he referred to the ministry of defense in saying that, “I have directed MINDEF to get confirmation.” Malaysia Airlines, still reeling from the mysterious loss of another Boeing 777 flight in March, said it had lost contact with the flight, MH17, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over Ukraine but offered no further details immediately. Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia said in a Twitter post that he was “shocked by reports that an MH plane crashed. We are launching an immediate investigation.”
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister, responded to reports that the aircraft had disappeared and might have been shot down by posting a series of terse messages on Twitter: “Monitoring this closely,” said one. In another, he referred to the Ministry of Defense in saying that, “I have directed MINDEF to get confirmation.”
Andrei Purgin, deputy prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the insurgent group in eastern Ukraine, denied in a telephone interview that the rebels had anything to do with the downing of the passenger jet. He said the rebels had shot down Ukrainian planes before but that their anti-aircraft weapons could only reach to around 4,000 meters, far below the level of passenger jets.
“We don’t have the technical ability to hit a plane at that height,” he said. He said the plane apparently came down in an area of Ukrainian military operations and that it was not out of the question that Ukrainians themselves shot it down.
“Remember the Black Sea plane diaster,” he said, referring to the 2001 shooting of a passenger jet bound for Israel that the Ukrainians shot down by accident during a military training exercise.