This the Email alert I got from the LA Times;
Malaysian Airlines jet with 295 aboard crashes near Ukraine-Russia border, reports say
Los Angeles Times | July 17, 2014 | 9:07 AM
A Malaysian Airlines jet carrying 295 people crashed near the Ukraine-Russia border today, Russian and Ukrainian media reported, citing aviation sources and officials.Ukraine's interior minister said the plane, carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew members, was shot down, the Associated Press reported.
The Boeing 777 was on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when it failed to confirm its entry into Russian airspace on schedule at 5:20 p.m. Moscow time, the Interfax news agency said.
The plane "disappeared from radar" at 33,000 feet and crashed near the city of Shakhtarsk in Ukraine's Donetsk region, a source in Ukrainian law enforcement said, according to Interfax-Ukraine.
I subscribe to this service because when there is breaking news like this, they will send out an Email blast long before it hits their main page.
This is that LA Times article that followed;
An advisor to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the Boeing 777-200ER was downed by a ground-to-air missile over territory controlled by pro-Russia separatists near the city of Donetsk.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew members from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when it failed to confirm its entry into Russian airspace on schedule at 5:20 p.m., Russia’s Interfax news agency said.
The plane began losing altitude about 35 miles before entering Russian airspace and “fell down,” minutes later, setting off its emergency beacon, the Itar-Tass news agency said.
The aviation website Flightaware said the last recorded position of MH17 was made at 6:20 a.m. PDT just west of the eastern border of Ukraine.
“This part of the world has limited coverage for us, so gaps of minutes or even an hour are not uncommon,” Flightaware said.
A Russian emergency response team was dispatched to the crash site in the village of Torez, near Shakhtarsk, about 25 miles west of the Russian border. The area has been the scene of fierce fighting between pro-Russia militants who have seized and occupied much of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Ukrainian government troops trying to recover control of the eastern territory.
The plane “disappeared from radar at 10,000 meters [33,000 feet] and then crashed near the city of Shakhtarsk in Ukraine's Donetsk region, a source in the Ukrainian law enforcement authorities said,” according to Interfax-Ukraine.
Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor Anton Gerashchenko said the plane was hit by a rocket fired from a Buk anti-aircraft system provided to the rebels by Russia. Ukrainian officials have accused the Kremlin of supporting the separatist rebels, an accusation Moscow denies.
“The cynicism of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his terrorists has no limits,” Gerashchenko said in a post on his Facebook page in Russian.
The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his nation’s armed forces “did not take action against any airborne targets.”
State-controlled Russia Today television said it had been told by officials of the separatist-proclaimed Peoples Republic of Donetsk that the rebels had nothing to do with the Malaysian jet crash.
Malaysia Airlines reported on Twitter that it lost contact with a plane after its last known position over Ukrainian territory.
Russian news agencies said an emergency assistance team had been dispatched to the crash site.
4 comments:
Lesser shit than this has caused a World War. I am none to sure we have been this close to the third one ever before today.
28 of the passengers were American citizens, killed in this attack by "Russian separatist activists," who mysteriously obtained advanced Russian surface-to-air missiles and radar, and mysteriously knew how to use them, despite, as Vladimir Putin wants you all to know, despite not being Russian troops committing war crimes and fighting out of uniform. No, this was the act of a rabble of angry farmers and shopkeepers.
So, the Russians are murdering American citizens, the North Koreans and Iranians are working feverishly on their nuclear weapons programs, the Middle East is in flames. Where's the Kenyan? Playing golf.
" Ukrainian officials have accused the Kremlin of supporting the separatist rebels, an accusation Moscow denies."
Igor is going to be in deep shit for leaving the keys in the missile launcher. I'm sure the separatists are sneaking into Russia and stealing these weapon systems. Tell me another one.
Having quite a bit of experience with these there is one fact I can tell you. Igor doesn't just turn the key on these the deployment takes around 5 mins. It is also a skilled job as in months to train. One of the applications for cluster munitions was for hitting battalion's of these Buks.Killing the crew is far more effective than trying to blow up the launchers.
Its pretty unlikely for the separatists, if you want to call them that, to be able to have a trained crew on hand.
The Buk can hit targets 23 km away at speed of mach 2.5 and its 70 kilo warhead is a fragmentation device cabable of downing a B52.
The poor sods on that flight never stood a chance.
Personally I doubt that this was and accident. The Buk has a complex IFF systems that notes civilian transponders. It can also be given low and high ceiling boundaries. Since literally hundreds of flights pass over this area, and have done during this war, the acknowledged ceiling height for military planes is 32,000ft. This was no accident.
Incidentally the UKs Daily Mail has photos of a Buk with two missiles missing being smuggled back over the Russian border. It also has photos of one being driven into the town shortly before the plane was shot down. A Ukranian transport plane was shot down last week by the same system.
A lot of coincidences that I'm sure are giving Putin bowel problems and sleepless nights!
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