Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane may have been shot down by pro-Russian militants by mistake, a U.S Intelligence official said.
Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane may have been shot down by pro-Russian militants by mistake, a U.S Intelligence official said.
The U.S official said that the airline was brought down by a Buk surface-to-air missile, but the intelligence services did not have information about any Russian specialists present at the launch site nor could they confirm that the missile operators were trained in Russia. However, speaking to the reporters, the intelligence services referred to pro-Russian separatists shooting down over a dozen planes and helicopters in Ukraine, Tengrinews reports citing Los Angeles Times.
Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane on the way from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur, when it was shot down over the rebel-controlled territory in self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. 298 people died in the airplane crash. Ukrainian air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane just 50 kilometers from the border with Russia. Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartapolov, Head of the Main Operations Department of the Russian Army General Staff, said that Ukrainian Su-25 warplane was in the same airspace with the Malaysian Airlines Boeing777 at the time the latter was shot down.
Ukraine denied the allegations. Meanwhile, Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf admitted that Russia’s information about the airplane crash was different from Washington’s information. “We saw in social media afterwards, we saw videos, we saw photos of the pro-Russian separatists bragging about shooting down an aircraft,” she told the journalists.