MikeLigalig.com

Posted 7:27 PM, July 17, 2014, by CNN Wire   


A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet crashed in a rebel-controlled part of eastern Ukraine on Thursday, spurring swift accusations from Ukrainian officials that “terrorists” shot down the aircraft.

The United States has concluded a missile shot down the Malaysia airlines plane, but hasn’t pinpointed who was responsible, a senior U.S. official told CNN’s Barbara Starr.

The Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard fell from the sky near the town of Torez in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, officials said. A top Ukrainian official said the plane, which was on the way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was flying at about 10,000 meters (nearly 33,000 feet) when the missile hit.

A radar system saw a surface-to-air missile system turn on and track an aircraft right before the plane went down, the senior U.S. official said. 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.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine’s military campaign against the separatists was to blame.

“This tragedy would not have happened, if there had been peace on that land, or in any case, if military operations in southeastern Ukraine had not been renewed,” Putin said in televised remarks. “And without a doubt the government of the territory on which it happened bears responsibility for this frightening tragedy.”

Ukraine’s state security chief accused two Russian military intelligence officers of involvement and said they must be punished.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said he based his allegation on intercepts of phone conversations between the two officers. “Now you know who carried out this crime. We will do everything for the Russian military who carried out this crime to be punished,” he told reporters.

Emergency crews scrambled to what witnesses described as a staggering scene of death and utter destruction.

“People said the plane kind of exploded in the air, and that everything rained down in bits and pieces, the plane itself, the people inside,” said Noah Sneider, an American freelance journalist who interviewed witnesses at the scene.

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As details emerge, accusations fly

Details — and accusations — quickly poured in about Thursday’s crash, which came the same week that Ukrainian officials said a Russian fighter shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane while the aircraft was in Ukrainian airspace.

Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, said in a Facebook post that “terrorists” fired on the plane operating a Buk surface-to-air missile system.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the crash as a “terrorist action.”

“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,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said, according to his website.

Firm details about what happened remained scarce.

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CNN’s Richard Quest, an aviation expert, said that it would be “extremely unusual” for an airliner at nearly 33,000 feet to be shot down. From the ground, one could simply look up and tell whether a plane was a commercial aircraft.

“It looks like a commercial aircraft, it squawks a commercial aircraft. So something is absolutely appalling that’s gone on here,” he said.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that Ukraine’s president had accepted an offer of U.S. experts to help investigate the crash.

“They will be on their way rapidly to see if we can get to the bottom of this,” he said.

Biden said the plane was apparently shot down, adding “not an accident, blown out of the sky.”

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Ukrainian forces have been struggling to quell the separatist unrest. Ukraine’s government has accused Russia of allowing weapons and military equipment, including tanks, to cross the border illegally into the hands of pro-Russian separatists.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that Russia now has 12,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, as well as some heavy weapons. The troop numbers had fallen to about 1,000 previously from a high of an estimated 40,000 forces earlier this year.
On Thursday, CNN reported that Ukrainian officials said a Russian fighter shot down a Ukrainian jet Wednesday as the jet flew in Ukrainian airspace.

Tensions are high over that incident, separate from the breaking news of the Malaysian flight Thursday.

Three months ago, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibited U.S. airlines from flying in areas not far from where Flight 17 reportedly crashed Thursday. “Due to the potential for conflicting air traffic control instructions from Ukrainian and Russian authorities and for the related potential misidentification of civil aircraft, United States flight operations are prohibited until further notice in the airspace over Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov,” the FAA said in April. Thursday’s plane crash reportedly was in eastern Ukraine, scores of miles north-northeast of the Sea of Azov.

On Thursday, French transportation official Frederic Cuvillier ordered that French airlines avoid Ukrainian airspace until the cause of Thursday’s Malaysia Airlines crash is known, the French Transportation Ministry said in a news release.

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Airline’s troubles

Thursday’s crash marks the second time this year that Malaysia Airlines has faced an incident involving a downed plane.

On March 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared. That Boeing 777 had 239 people on board. Searchers have found no trace of 370 or its passengers, despite extensive search efforts.

Flight 370 probably flew into the southern Indian Ocean on autopilot with an unresponsive crew, Australian authorities said last month.

During the early phase of the search for Flight 370, aircraft and ships scoured vast stretches of the surface of the southern Indian Ocean but found no debris.

Pings initially thought to be from the missing plane’s flight recorders led to a concentrated underwater search that turned up nothing.

A new underwater search, farther south, will be broadly in an area where planes and vessels had already looked for debris on the surface of the water. It is expected to begin in August.

The first Boeing 777 entered service in June 1985, and the airplane has flown almost five million flights, accumulating more than 18 million flight hours, according to Boeing’s web site. The plane is capable to flying up to 43,100 feet.

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This Is The Former Russian Military Officer Who Might Be Behind The Shooting Of MH17

    Pamela Engel
    Jul. 18, 2014



REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
Pro-Russian separatist commander Igor Strelkov leaves after a news conference in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, July 10, 2014.


A retired Russian military officer is suspected of being involved in the attack that downed a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.

Igor Girkin, who is also known by his pseudonym Igor Strelkov, has been called "one of the most powerful separatist figures in eastern Ukraine." He's a Russian citizen from Moscow and has declared himself the Minister of Defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), according to Radio Free Europe.

The Ukrainian government says Strelkov is a covert agent of Russia's GRU military intelligence. In documents posted on separatist websites he has asked Russia to provide military assistance to the DPR.

Strelkov is a veteran of both the Soviet and Russian armies, according to Reuters.

Around the time the Malaysia Airlines plane went down, Strelkov posted a statement on Russia's largest social network that seemed to take responsibility for the attack. The post was later deleted, and it's now widely thought that the separatists mistook the Malaysia plane for a Ukrainian aircraft.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-igor-strelkov-blamed-for-shooting-of-mh17-2014-7#ixzz385e2ffRn

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