Malaysia Airlines jet “shot down” over Ukraine – update 1
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A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 has crashed in Ukraine, killing everyone onboard.
The flight was carrying 295 people – 280 passengers and 15 crew members – from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine – an area at the centre of the country’s civil war.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko called the incident a “terrorist attack” while Russia news agency Interfax reported an Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser as saying that a missile fired from the ground by separatists had hit the aircraft.
In a statement released early this morning, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the airspace the aircraft was traversing “was not subject to restrictions” and that the flight path had been “declared safe” by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Although it has emerged that some other airlines, including KLM, Turkish Airlines and Aeroflot, avoid flying over Ukrainian airspace.
The Malaysian PM added however, that he is as-yet “unable to verify the cause of this tragedy”.
“We will… find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone can be left unturned. If it transpires that the plane was indeed shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice,” Najib said.
“I have also spoken to the President of Ukraine. He has pledged that there will be a full, thorough and independent investigation, and Malaysian officials will be invited to take part,” he added.
The incident comes just less than five months after the loss of flight MH370, which was en route from KL to Beijing when it disappeared.
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