Malaysian plane crashes in Ukraine, 295 killed

A Malaysian passenger airliner with 295 people on board crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border on Thursday, the Interfax news agency cited an aviation industry source as saying. The Boeing plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, it said.

The Interfax report said the plane came down 50 km short of entering Russian airspace. It ‘began to drop, afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory,’ the unnamed source said.

The plane appeared to have come down in a region of military action where Ukrainian government forces are battling pro-Russian separatists.

A separate unnamed source in the Ukrainian security apparatus, quoted by Interfax, said the plane disappeared from radar at a height of 10,000 metres after which it came down near the town of Shakhtyorsk.

A Ukrainian official said the passenger plane was shot down, and Malaysia Airlines tweeted that it lost contact with one of its flights over Ukrainian airspace.

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on his Facebook page the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet. He also said it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 72,000 feet.