over the black sea now the thing about that keys is that it took ukraine a while to acknowledge that it was there miss out behind the plane crash in military ukraine military officials were heatedly denying that they were at fault and they only acknowledged right after the international evolution society. from their side acknowledged that that was indeed. now there were overall over seventy passengers on board of that plane no one survived and that was the president that happened as a sad again back in two thousand and one what we are talking about here is of course a large scale tragedy and it is yet unknown what was the reason behind that plane crashed and now this is the main question now of course it is a salute medina thanks so much for bringing us those details. ok let's just bring you the other information now because after another major carrier

is reporting the diverting the planes to avoid ukraine in space you may have thought that was already happening apparently not but it is now among the air france. europe's transport agency euro control as advised all e.u. carriers to avoid flying over ukraine flights currently borne are also being rerouted. thanks for staying with us here on r.t. international as we continue with this developing story just broke or just over two and a half hours ago of this born tragedy let's get some reaction now from europe let's go to our burning correspondent peter all of it's got the latest and i know that have been some responses coming out of your we heard from america we've heard from russia but what about in europe what is the reaction peter. world

messages of condolence have been flooding in from european leaders one in particular that it's worth a note comes from the dutch leader mark router know the flight they tear has gone down in eastern ukraine was known as m h seventeen but it's interesting to note it also was a k l m operated flight it was k.l. flight four one zero three and it's understood that there are an awful lot of dutch citizens who are on board that flight in fact some of the photographs that have been circling on on social media sites show huge piles of passports even some of them taking pictures of the actual passport page showing who these who those people are they seem to have the picture of being killed in this horrific disaster also it's understood from the french foreign minister he said that he believes that there was four french citizens on board he also expressed his condolences behalf of

the country of france to the prime minister of malaysia. now the british prime minister david cameron has said that senior british officials are now meeting to try and ascertain exactly what has happened here he said they weren't going to be trying to establish any kind of. any kind of policy just yet regarding this it was far too soon for that but they are just trying to find out exactly what is going on we heard a similar thing from the dutch leader he also said a lot is still unclear facts circumstances and passengers but as i say it is appearing that there are a lot of european citizens that were on board that flight of course amsterdam is a huge huge european aviation help in fact kuala lumpur is in in asia as well in a lot of people would have been flying through. from other parts of europe other parts of the world in order to get to that particular part of asia so this is a very regular flight a very regular operated journey between the. and kuala lumpur and yes it does

appear this of course this full flight of nearly three hundred people everybody just trying to to go about their business and get where they were going on what was a routine journey for airlines to travel upon so the reaction is coming out from here in europe european leaders expressing their condolences to all of those the enough and their families who have been caught up in this in this tragedy here also to worth noting when you mention the airlines that have stopped flying over eastern ukraine british airlines have also announced online that they will be stopping all flights within ukrainian airspace with the exception of their once a day flight into from london to kiev but even that was under review they would decide later whether they be continuing operating those routes as people in airlines are just trying to to avoid that whole area until we can ascertain exactly what happened to that flight in eastern ukraine. ok thank you to our correspondent

in berlin bring is the european reaction to this line tragedy to all of that we managed to speak to people in eastern ukraine as well who witnessed the crash we've been hearing from them throughout the hours let's have a listen to what they told us. when i. was working for you clearly i don't. believe in four. and then we saw one of the plane falling separately we saw black smoke rising up on then there was nothing going to tell you you have my brother is there right now. there are a lot of what do your buddies. from amsterdam to malaysia. in light of. everybody in charge because there are a lot of our bodies. some of the dead bodies and my brother what.

he told me there are a lot of people have lying around. testimony that we can hear from some other eyewitnesses some suspects the ukrainian military could have been behind the tragedy while others are pointing the finger at anti government fighters. but. the scenery is shocking there is a ceiling aircraft dead body scan around the mutilated so smoking it is easy to tell this was a sealy an aircraft there were a lot of passports lying around belonging to the nationals of malaysia and the netherlands the airplane broke up into a lot of parts. and components which were scattered around to within the perimeter of some five hundred meters or

a kilometer according to preliminary information from the local militias the airplane might have been shut down by a missile that came from the positions of the ukrainian military much of this information will be v.a. fied it is could be that the airplane indeed was shut down by ukrainian air defenses because the armaments possessed by the militias would not be enough insufficient to shoot down an airplane from an altitude of ten thousand meters above ground. let's hear from another eyewitness this time from a local resident to iraq at the scene around half an hour after the crash. and then when fire i mean started. putting it out i saw bodies here and bodies. i saw head and hands

and. as you walk along the few d.c. dead bodies here in their ski scared it in various poses. now a little earlier we also managed to speak to the deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed annette's republic he denies allegations from kiev that anti government forces could be behind the disaster saying they lack the capability to shoot down a plane at such a high altitude. or go. over the station we don't have anything except for pairs we could not see this airplane on our radars because he travels at ten thousand meters at supersonic speed so technically we had known capability to track and shoot down this aircraft i would like to remind you that ten days ago ukraine imposed

a little flavor zone over the. people's republic and every day they claimed that russian draw in the in reconnaissance planes that were violating ukrainian airspace so they probably took that plane for one of them well as well as and addition to getting eyewitness reports artie's also got people on the ground now r.t. spanish correspondent francisco quiet at the scene of the crash for here's what he had to say. only a kilometer far away from the border between russia and ukraine here we are in the middle of the cross. maybe fifty meters a one hundred with parts of bodies here and also weeks parts of the airplane that is still burning the situation right now is controlled by the militia and really the situation in this moment. of the suster right now here

is clear that nobody knows what happened in terms of who was there responsible of this accident would you can see is that in one hundred meters all these parts is totally in ruins and there are several several i could say hundreds of parts of the trains. these are spread when we were coming from from the city from terrorists we checked like one kilometer ago parts of the bodies the situation right now there are some surely there are a few journalists here on the fire mind. trying to to to put the fire to finish the fire and right now everything. with a big question about what happened here was francisco live not

live but the latest information from the scene from him a little bit further away from him on the russian ukrainian border we need to lose everything standing by waiting to speak to us once again arena what what is happening now what do you know. well at this point there's information coming in from the exodus from the self-proclaimed donetsk people's republic they're saying that they only see observers are heading to the crash site again that is according to the people's republic of donetsk now whether or not these are the same observers who were actually on this side of the border just earlier on thursday that is yet unclear just as it is unclear who will be receiving the flight data recorders apparently again according to the next people's republic they have recovered all of the twelve flight data recorders that were onboard of the crash there were there was some information previously that they were going to hand those

over to moscow indeed official investigation has been started by a key officials into the crash of russia has offered its assistance russia's minister emergency's has said that it's willing to cooperate and in fact. has sent an official request to the ukrainian to the ukrainian authorities are asking to do so the u.s. has also offered assistance in this case but according to the american president barack obama of course the first and foremost according to him need right now is to figure out whether or not there were any u.s. citizens on board at this point it is not yet clear whether or not that indeed is the case there has been information that at least four french citizens were on board the flight which has already been called by their worst air traffic disaster since nine eleven. with the latest from the russia ukraine border. something we're hearing is that russia's ministry of emergencies has lodged an

official request with ukrainian authorities to send it off to work alongside local emergency workers the crash site no information from the r t twitter site which is constantly updating information b.r.t. dot com website as well. has rolling news and giving us up to date information about what's occurring and indeed new as we say information is coming out all the time on it some of it is yet to be verified. but it is it is a situation where it's very hard to see whether or not something is correct or not i don't know it's just a couple of hours just over a couple of hour i mean into the actual tragedy absolutely i mean even with the eyewitness reports even with our reporters at the c.e.o. in the region speaking to officials we've you know political officials giving their comments on what happened even with all that there's always some ambiguity but we're also pooling information from from other knees agencies for example as they

are now. claiming via an emergency worker that at least one hundred bodies have been found and they are saying through their reports that all of the people on the flight two hundred ninety people are reported dead is the worst possible scenario work is a scare in the air for the for the flight recorder so it seems that the recovery operation is already underway everybody is desperate to try and get that black box to find out what happened here because at the moment nobody knows whether this was a technical fault whether it was a downed plane so the really crucial information at this point that's all yet to be discovered and the accusations are you know i said earlier these these were going to come it wasn't difficult to predict they are coming already president poroshenko on the ukrainian side is all ready making accusations of this being a terrorist attack and he's quite firmly pointing the finger towards self defense

forces of just as equally denied this don't seem to be making existence of their own at this point but probably just because that's been that it for tat conflicts so far and yet there's actually no evidence that either side was involved as yet which makes it imperative of course that we. we get to that black box well and quickly let's try and move on with a few facts that we do know information certain because one after another major carriers are reporting they're diverting their plans to avoid ukrainian airspace there was some confusion about this earlier and it's now been confirmed among them . that we know for certain europe's transport agency euro control has advised all e.u. cartier's to avoid flying over ukraine flights currently are also being rerouted because that's a number of. things that our number of guests we spoke to were trying just to

wonder whether only military planes could fly over this region of east ukraine the international air transport association has said no that was not the case and in fact it's not unusual for civilian planes to fly over war zones providing that they stay at a certain altitude and not also brings up another amount of questions after that altitude could a plane have been shot. and that's something as well we've been discussing difficult but only hours will seem to be the vernon isn't it and we already know the bin sensitivities you know tensions will have been aimed towards the skies because of recent accusations of. aviation involvement of military involvement of planes from either side so even though we've seen predominantly ground conflict the tensions we're turning to the skies. then that's where we mean we don't want to speculate on this but that's where it's

a logical progression that people would have been looking they're sensitive to any airplanes coming over what is relatively. speaking of that we also know that president putin and president obama have spoken earlier be said that there will be a cease fire. on the ground in eastern ukraine as they try and deal with this situation of what is occurring almost three hundred people we believe have been killed in this. boeing seven seven seven crash it fell to the ground near the russian ukraine border we've been hearing from eyewitnesses we've got a correspondent on the ground there in are the pictures you are seeing shows what appears to be. sea planes tickets stubs except for a from what looks like one of the biggest airline tragedies in history we

can see as well with if it is three hundred people on boeing seven seven seven which i believe is i think it's the second largest. after the seven four seven so it is a massive plane we believe it was packed because there was two hundred eighty passengers fifteen crew members as well younis looking. and fortunately at this point we only we establish the facts as we as we have them of course it's inevitable now the speculation has to follow but we're doing it by speaking to aviation experts to get their professional opinion on what possibly could have happened what you know only by speaking to experts we can eliminate some possibilities let's speak to another guest now and i think we can talk to young charles perrin i think we have on the line now. if you can hear me so yeah very good evening thanks for joining us and we're just trying to i'm sure as you are trying to understand what on earth happened with this flight whether this could

have been a technical failure or something more sinister i mean when the investigation finds the black box which seems to be all important now how long would it then take them to figure out what actually took place. what is a black box. is not is very quickly an answer could be a good many answer could be given within a day or a few days and the black box must be there because. it's all in the same place ok as we understand it the crew didn't actually inform ground control of any potential threat or problem in your opinion i mean how unusual is that and what would that lead you towards if you were. going to give your thoughts on what might have caused the crash. that the crew didn't report anything indicates the catastrophe was sudden within students there was no opportunity to send

a message to the ground so there was either a catastrophic on board or there is this alleged suggestion. so. we have the news of the only two possibilities at the moment we do know that ukrainian army is carrying out a military operation in the east and the plane's fuselage colors and the are reminiscent of a russian flag and of course are a number of other nations around the world the red white and blue but is it possible it could have been shot down by the military. i don't think really the greatest respect you can ask me questions because all these things at the moment in the discussion and the investigators are an investigator for somebody need to find out they need that black box we need to know what

happened and we need to sit through the wreckage to see if any random it's called if it was hit by any bits of missile around the site of course we appreciate the fact we just you know as we say we're trying to get information coming in from a lot of different sources trying to piece together what may have happened except we are seeing large chunks of debris which is. what i was told quite unusual for such a crash is not so and what it should just slow speed impact with the ground. sounds more like it broke up on the way to the ground. probably almost possibly scrape nearly straight but it certainly pieces we've seen on the films that is not dissimilar unfortunately one has to think of something of the. explosion in the bits of the aircraft arrived in very many places all sorts of

presumed sorts of shapes and sizes from that it would have to be. all the bits together like a jigsaw puzzle if they did not could be to work out exactly what happened where you mention lockerbie guy was a bomb of course but it was in fact shot and i to reiterate we are speculating at this stage we don't know whether it was a technical failure etc but if it was shot and do you know of any other cases like this in the past something similar. since you asked me to make some comments i've been trying to think of similar things that. i mean. i can't think of anything. extraordinary. investigation it will need. more cooperation from all the parties. to resolve this mystery because we still have. troubles.

ok thanks so much for joining us and giving his your expert analysis of this. i think we're actually just going to begin if you just keep on the line perhaps because we've got a little bit more information be interesting to get his opinion on this year. you know are you there are. great things let me just give you a little bit more information that's coming in to us because russia's interfax news agency is quoting a source in the russian industry claiming president putin's plane the president of russia may have been the target of the attack claimed the president jacques crossed paths over warsaw the exact same height as the doomed boeing just forty minutes after that the plane's they're said to share a similar form and as we mentioned the colors are red white and blue as well and

what are your thoughts on that again this is coming from a source in the russian aviation industry to interfax. because clearly good intelligence will be good. speculation to be honest. good intelligence. good news all of the original. you need. your intelligence to be accurate. to say one plane or another. not the. red white or blue yeah that's a really interesting perspective to go absolutely because you know we get this information coming out the president's plane was in the vicinity people are going to jump to their own conclusions as interesting to get your take on that you know essentially this is an extremely difficult thing to do. thank you so much for joining us once again.

let's try and speak to another of our correspondents now situated in washington i believe garniture can i think we've got on the line yes indeed we do thank so much to join is going to american reaction and what did president obama have to say. while president obama did not say much he said the world is watching reports of a downed passenger jet near the russia ukraine border he said his priority is to find out whether u.s. citizens were on board that plane and the u.s. president has not yet pointed a blame finger at anybody the state department answering questions or earlier also refrain from making premature statements about who is to blame for this tragedy but in all likelihood in the coming hours and coming days will see a vicious blame game with ukraine pointing at moscow russia already saying it had nothing to do with this the rebels in eastern ukraine saying they didn't do it what exactly happened is absolutely a mystery at this point and this morning president obama and president putin spoke

over the phone and were portably they discussed the breaking news and no details of course what more they spoke about. ok. speaking to us from the u.s. thank you for that let's actually go a little bit closer to the wreckage we can go to the russian ukrainian border because there has been standing by there for the last number of hours we're going to try and get into contact with her can you hear me and if so what's the latest from where you are. indeed yes i can in fact all the near the latest that we're hearing is that the representatives from the self-proclaimed donetsk people's republic have recovered at least eight of the twelve data flight data recorder recorders on the board of that plane now there have been some speculations that they may have those over to russia and indeed ukraine you can officials have already launched an official investigation into the cause of the crash and russia's

minister of emergencies has offered their assistance in the situation as reportedly have the. representatives from the united states now also according to the representatives from the people's republic. there there are always c.e.o. observers also heading to the scene off the crash now whether or not it is the same always see observers that were here on this side on the russian side of the border just earlier on thursday that it is not yet clear of course this is this is an incredibly tragic incident and the airlines are diverting their flights one by one a lot of them are actually are actually saying there will be diverting those flights. till the situation improves we've heard that air france and turkish airlines are among the biggest european airlines that have done so russia's arab slot and transparent also said that they will be diverting their flights from over ukraine and we also just every student for me. if.

i was told to turn around and return to export of origin instead of heading towards ukraine where it was scheduled to land in fact if you look at the. radar radars out there showing flights in air it does look. at this point is virtually empty. but the ukraine russia border thanks so much for joining us again and you know for me the most interesting element to come out of that is mentioned. the several flight data recorders have been recovered what she understands of what we heard from the aviation experts we spoke to earlier it means them we could be talking potentially just a matter of hours and so they can get a significant insight i think because that's normally when thing where is the black box we heard of accidents where the plane has gone into the sea in the black box was never recovered or there's been a search for months and months if it has been fine this may be. really the clue to

unlocking water occurred just a little bit more information actually we're hearing from germany's r.t.l. channel they say there were at least seventy one dutch citizens aboard the crashed plane we also heard earlier and i must stress that this is confirmed that there were twenty three passengers with us identification and nine people from britain also going from this flight from amsterdam to kuala lumpur and that is unconfirmed as it stands but that is information coming to us from the r.t.l. channel in germany ok. thanks for staying with us this evening as we cover this story we will continue to do so you can take a very short break. mr

. she said. you would still. look on the machine. you're tuned into our attention also with me you know neil neil harvey as well on this tragic day i reminder of our breaking news story a malaysia airlines boeing seven seven seven has crashed in eastern ukraine all two

hundred eighty passengers fifteen crew as well meaning two hundred ninety five people are presumed dead that is according to ukraine's security services that the plane was on route from kuala lumpur and was flying over the part of ukraine where kiev is carting out its military crackdown on government protesters the jet apparently disappeared from radar around sixty kilometers we believe from the russian border the first local it's who arrived at the scene reported dozens of bodies the crash site is spread over an area rug and a kilometer wide and ukrainian authorities they claim the boeing was presumably hit from a rocket launched by self defense fighters but later denied be of any weapon capable of bringing down a jet so high president poroshenko said the ukrainian military did not target anything in the region either several may.