World leaders demanded an international investigation into the alleged shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 with 298 people on board over eastern Ukraine.
US President Obama yesterday said the US believed that Flight MH17 was shot down by surface to air missiles from pro-Russian rebel held areas of Ukraine, the New York Times reported.
“We are going to make sure the truth is out,” the New York Times quoted Obama as saying.
His statement came hours after the US envoy to the United Nations, Samantha Power, pointed fingers directly at Ukrainian separatists and their Russian associates for the downing of Flight 17 at an emergency Security Council meeting on the Ukraine conflict, the New York Times reported.
“We assess Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 carrying these 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was likely downed by a surface-to-air missile, an SA-11, operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine,” Power said. She said the United States could not “rule out technical assistance by Russian personnel” in operating the system.
There were no survivors from Thursday’s crash, which left wreckage and bodies scattered across miles of rebel-held territory near the border with Russia.
Makeshift white flags marked where bodies lay in corn fields and among the debris. Others, stripped bare by the force of the crash, had been covered by polythene sheeting weighed down by stones, one marked with a flower in remembrance.
This is the latest tragedy in the crisis in Ukraine, which has killed hundreds since pro-Western protests toppled the Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula a month later.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an initial response, said it was too early to decide on further sanctions.
Crash Site
The plane crashed about 40 km (25 miles) from the border with Russia near the regional capital of Donetsk, a stronghold of rebels who have been fighting Ukrainian government forces.
Leaders of the rebels’ self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic denied involvement and said a Ukrainian air force jet had brought down the intercontinental flight.
Russia’s Defence Ministry later pointed the finger at Ukrainian ground forces, saying it picked up radar activity from a Ukrainian missile system south of Donetsk when the airliner was brought down, Russian media reported.
The Ukrainian security council said no missiles had been fired from the armouries of its armed forces.
The Ukrainian government released recordings it said were of Russian intelligence officers discussing the shooting down of a civilian airliner by rebels who may have mistaken it for a Ukrainian military plane.
The United States called for a ceasefire to allow access to the crash site, as did Merkel.
“There are many indications that the plane was shot down, so we have to take things very seriously,” the German leader said.
The two black boxes – the voice and data-recording devices – from the felled aircraft were said to be missing from the crash site, the New York Times reported.
An adviser to the Donetsk regional governor, Kostyantyn Batozsky, said the aircraft voice and data recording devices had been recovered by Ukrainian Emergency Services personnel who had been granted access to the site by separatist forces.
But he said he did not know the current location of the devices or who had possession of them, according to the New York Times.
The pro-Russian rebel leader of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, Aleksandr Borodai, told reporters that his group had the so-called black boxes and would hand them over to officials of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the New York Times reported yesterday.
