seventeen with two hundred ninety eight passengers and crew on board to call from amsterdam airport on a scheduled trans continental flight to kuala lumpur. and for twenty one pm local time radio contact with the pilots of the malaysia airlines boeing seven hundred seven stopped and the jet disappeared from radar there was no warning or distress signal of any kind the jet was last recorded as an altitude of ten kilometers of eastern ukraine a region racked by civil conflict infighting within the hour the fate of m.h. seventeen had become clear the jet had disintegrated in the air they breathe from it forming over a wide area anti-government forces arrived and secured the crash site within the hour confirming that there were no survivors global reaction was immediate we have to do everything in our capability to make sure an objective picture of what happened is made public and known to people in our country as well as the people of ukraine and the whole world. thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the

passengers wherever they call out. to everyone connected with people on that flight this must be resolved by an international investigation to establish the facts of what has happened almost immediately speculation began that the jet had been shot down. i said turly because you don't have the actual we don't have all the detail you want to be sure of what i say apparently. have been shot down shot down not an action. described by seven pm local time here than the anti-government sides had washed their hands of responsibility the government claimed that the carry out any operation while in self-defense. they simply did not have the weapons that could reach by ten pm ukrainian time finds in these claims to have found the black box the flight data

recorder promising to hundreds to international investigators more again. and all it is really going to right now on the russia ukraine border she sent us the very latest report judging by the pictures that it's a miracle that it hasn't hit any of the houses any of the residential houses located in that area at least we do not have any confirmation that regard representatives from the self-proclaimed donetsk people's republic are said to have recovered the black boxes the flight data recorders now whether or not they will be handing them over to moscow as initial reports suggested or already we cannot say with certainty however the prime minister of the self-proclaimed people's republic did say that they are going to declare a truce for several days in order to make it easier for the investigations take place and indeed ukrainian officials have said that they're launching an investigation as well as a criminal case into this incident now. international says. also

in ukraine russia was among the first offer assistance that came from the ministry of emergencies the u.s. has also said they're willing to help out and they were already voices being heard from the e.u. officials for saying that an international investigation into this tragedy is needed now u.s. intelligence officials claim the plane was downed by of surface to air missile but it's not specifically blamed on the side of the american vice president joe biden has said that a team of specialists will be sent to assist you. with the investigation and more reaction from washington now with our correspondent richard. u.s. officials believe it was a surface to air missile that shot down the malaysian plane over ukraine the u.s. is not pointing the blame thing there just yet president obama spoke with the ukrainian leader it all but are shameka we can be sure that the blame game in the coming days and weeks is going to be vicious there are questions as to who had the

capability to do this the ukrainian military certainly has the capability a launch like that would require a team of specialists as we hear from many experts and there is another question why was this malaysian airliner flying over the conflict zone we know that u.s. airlines had been avoiding the area for some time to size me because it was deemed unsafe what kind of instructions that this plane was see from the ukrainian air traffic control and what exactly was happening inside the cockpit just moments before the tragedy hopefully we'll get more answers when investigators get hold of the black box of course one of the main questions at this point is who is going to investigate this the u.n. secretary general spoke out calling for an international investigation one of the concerns moving forward is that the investigation could eventually be politicized the blame game is full on in the media even before any facts have been established is going if you can the international investigators haven't even arrived at the crash site yet the ukrainian authorities and some western media outlets very quick

to blame and fight is of course one of myrna portnoy are now taking us through some of the rather wild speculation in the media a shocking tragedy claiming the lives of nearly three hundred victims before any investigation even begins the lack of credible facts has it prevented many in the west from jumping to conclusions according to the sun newspaper the russian president is personally responsible for downing the malaysia airlines plane in ukraine and accusations some u.s. officials are doing their best to fuel if it is a result of these are separatist. or russian actions mistakingly believing there was a ukrainian war plane i think there's going to be hell to pay and there should be there does seem to be a growing awareness that it probably had to be russian insurgents know how we

determine that will require some forensics but then there is evidence pointing in that direction the equipment had to come from russia either the missile came from it's a missile that came from russia or it was from the separatists and it's a buccal style vessel i mean this came from russia russia has their fingerprints all over it either way why stop it fingers according to the daily mail russia's hands are soaked in blood some journalists conveniently camouflaged their blame with a question mark headline after headline asking if russia is to blame very few bothering to enquire about ukraine's possible role in the plane crash the new york times on the other hand reported ukraine's accusations leaving no room in this article for russia's position the us nato and russia have all called for an investigation to be launched to establish the facts many media outlets have already created their narrative even if it means bypassing the truth marina port ny r.t.

new york. and some of the accusations against the anti-government fighters are based on a single tweet which was reportedly posted and then deleted from the social media account of the donetsk people's republic the tweet that was allegedly a boast from anti-government forces taken possession of an advanced surface to air missile system capable of bringing down such a plane however in an interview to the ukrainian media general prosecutor actually denied that another allegation coming from ukrainian officials is based around what they say is an intercepted phone call between anti-government fighters in it they purportedly admit to shooting down the plane. now if indeed this passion project was shot down there are few weapons in the region able to do that and one possible example is the book surface to air missile system several former soviet countries use the weapon including ukraine it has the ability to intercept up to twenty four

targets at the same time within a distance of up to forty five kilometers and reaching altitudes of twenty five kilometers it's projectiles travel up to twelve hundred meters per second as of yet there's no confirmation this missile system was the cause of the crash now legal expert and blogger alexander mccord us he says that a thorough investigation must be conducted before anything is put forward that we're looking at at least a couple of days if not even a bad week or even more before a proper full thought really research investigation takes place that the information i have heard is that the people in the don't gas in donetsk are ready for at this moment in time soon they will cooperate fully with the investigation so that it seems that they are the people who are in physical control so hopefully that should mean that the whole thing will proceed further smoothly. now the local

reporter patrick lang cast aside all the tragedy in the don't yet screech now joining me live over the phone here without the international patrick hello to you is rory huge day here in moscow i hope you can hear me now what is the very latest from the scene where you are. i've been here since less the evening and the activity right now is basically the emergency crew there crews are going through the trees near and chopping the branches off and then taking the branches and doing sweeps of the wheat fields to locate. the remains. and they are posting white ribbons on sticks next to each. casualty and the fields here are just littered and these little white flags there are literally hundreds

hundreds of white flags around and each one walked to them individually and they all are marking. remains and through the night. it wasn't a lot of activity there was some emergency vehicles here but they seem to be leaving everything as it is and not disturbing the wreckage i believe they might be waiting on inspectors or something along these lines can you tell us anything about emergency people post an investigative you'll suggesting that investigators have not arrived yet but the emotional emergency personnel are certainly that. yes emergency personnel have been here since yesterday and seems as though this morning there is a lot more and it's very active here as far as the emergency personnel goes less night when i arrived late in the evening it wasn't very active as far as the

emergency personnel but this morning they're definitely all working very hard to locate and mark the remains patrick we we got a very quick response out of washington rick from u.s. intel that the u.s. intelligence community saying that the plane was shot down by a missile that's according to american intelligence have you spoken to anyone on the ground as a father detail as to does it look in the life of one is down the debris field is very large. yes the debris field there's actually several debris fields there's some that are heavily bernd's right now i'm standing in the middle of the engine debris field it's got the the two jets engines scattered around and the burn burnt area is. maybe one hundred meters across each way there are skeletons in different remains.

it's really a horrible situation here but the overall field is at least a kilometer. across each way probably more i would think and a patrick are you seeing a presence of locals in the area the locals in the region come to help with the rescue operation the recovery operation. there is a there's a few locals around but they are just being asked to kind of they're being asked by the din are soldiers to kind of keep a distance. but it's a very calm situation now because everybody realizes how much of a horrible situation it is. there's hasn't been any conflicts between locals in our journey or anything along these lines. everybody really i think is understanding the. gravity of the situation and. no one is happy

with that that's right up there we understand that the problem twenty activists have agreed to some sort of a temporary truce ceasefire with the authorities in kiev a reporter patrick lang has to at the crash site and don yes we will be joining you again soon thanks very much for that thank you honest give you a recap of our breaking news story here on the international this morning the investigation is now want to find what caused a malaysia airlines passenger plane to crash in eastern ukraine on thursday all two hundred ninety eight people on board the boeing seven seventy seven were killed locals saw the plane fly over their heads and then slam into the ground some of told us they saw bodies running from the sky deborah and corpses a scattered across an area of up to fifteen kilometers now this is how i witnesses describe the moment the plane came down. i saw a piece of the plane fall about four hundred meters from my apartment when i went

to check it out i saw scattered bodies from a distance and looked like debris was falling but as it turned out it was people falling out of the aircraft. i heard the noise of the planes and thought the bombardment would start soon and i also heard shooting somewhere from above we're used to the sound of shooting here but then there was a loud clap i looked up and saw something fooling over me it broke into pieces the main part tile here and exploded all of. it was terrible what i saw at first i saw smoke and fire and when the firemen started to put out the flames i saw bodies torn apart there were children too there were bodies attached to seats here and there. so they looked upon it we were swimming and we heard three distinct shots actually not sure it's more like explosions and then we saw the plane fall main its wing was falling off and then we saw black smoke and that's all.

came down in the field where my brother is there at the moment there are many people and degree everywhere you found a ticket from amsterdam to malaysia everything is scattered around it simply horrific so many bodies he couldn't even count them and the plane on route from amsterdam to kuala lumpur was flying over the part of eastern ukraine where kiev continues its military crackdown against anti-government forces it was then that it disappeared from radar shortly before it was due to enter russian airspace and ukrainian president petro poroshenko cues to antigovernment fighters of downing the plane with a rocket calling the incident a terrorist attack but militia groups are denying it they say they don't have access to weapons like that capable of taking out a plane at such an altitude that this one was flying out local activists say they have found the flight recorders amid the wreckage an investigation will be getting underway shortly. so worst hit has been the netherlands which has lost more than

one hundred fifty of its citizens relatives and are desperate to find out what happened to their loved ones short time ago i spoke with r.t. as police in amsterdam. well relatives and friends would have gone to bed last night hoping that everything that took place yesterday was just a dreadful nightmare but holland has woken up this morning to nothing short of a national tragedy as you said the majority of the passengers on that flight were dutch nationals and that flight took off from here where i am in amsterdam people airport before it crashed in ukraine and the scenes we saw here yesterday absolute devastation of the devastated passengers relatives just trying to obtain information about what had happened to their loved ones and the grief and the shock of coming to terms with their losses it was just unbelievable we know

that malaysian airlines have sent out i can't seem to amsterdam to help passengers cope with their losses but we also know that a number of the passengers were headed to melbourne for an international aid conference we've had the international aid society tweeting their condolences and that's sadness at the loss of friends and colleagues but as i said the majority of the passengers on that ill fated flight were dutch nationals and a huge group of relatives waiting here in amsterdam for more information for what happened to their loved ones and why but a sense of shock last night but this morning the country has woken up to the tragedy and the reality of that very high death toll from poland. during a phone conversation with barack obama vladimir putin called for an unconditional cease fire to be declared in ukraine with immediate effect it would joining me live

for an aussie international position not just in front of the kremlin good to see you ed what are officials saying in response to this. well the kremlin spokes person dmitri of said to the guardian that it's stupid to presume that russia can be culpable for this and he also said that the kremlin won't be making any further remarks until more is known about what actually happens now we also know that president putin has as you said called for an unconditional cease fire to take place for the media effect and he's also said that ultimately it's ukraine must their responsibility for this tragedy because it happened over ukrainian territory and if there was peace in eastern ukraine then this would never have happened now we also know that the leaders of

the self-proclaimed and yes people's republic are going to implement a humanitarian truce so that an investigation can find out exactly what happened now this is what president putin had to say earlier. that we have to do everything in our capability to make sure an objective picture of what happened is made public and known to people in our country as well as the people of ukraine in the whole world what happened is completely unacceptable and no one has the right to walk away without making ject of conclusion of what happened first i want to point out that this tragedy wouldn't have happened if there was peace on the ukrainian land at least if the fighting hadn't had resumed in the south east without any doubt the state on whose territory this happened must stand responsible for this horrible tragedy. right so that was president putin

so until hard facts are known about what exactly did happen it's very easy to jump to conclusions about this. live from moscow thanks very much. now in the meantime one after another major air carriers are diverting their planes around ukrainian airspace among them france. as well as europe's transport agency euro control has advised all the e.u. carriers to avoid ukraine's aspace and more now with peter all of a in berlin heard a short statement from german chancellor angela merkel in which she said she was shocked and expressed her condolences to the families of those who have been killed who are expecting a further statement from her in a few hours time that go into a little bit more depth we've heard from a colleague. in amsterdam the dutch prime minister has also been expressing his condolences the u.k.

where nine people it seems were on that flight nine u.k. citizens david cameron the prime minister there held a meeting with senior government officials to decide what the next step would be what they actually knew about what had happened and then the united kingdom went to the united nations and asked for a special set a special session of the security council now that session will take place in new york later on friday but what we are seeing though is an outpouring of condolence and grief here in europe as all care is just about have said that they're going to try and employed all of ukrainian airspace control who are the european body that monitor traffic control and give guidelines and traffic control of rule eastern ukraine no salute no go area until we find out anything more about what's happened with this terrible tragedy that touched lives across europe. peter all of our u.s. intelligence officials are claiming the plane was downed by

a surface to air missile but it's not specifically blamed either side as president joe biden said that a team of specialists will be sent to assist ukraine you know authorities with the investigation a guy in h.d. with more reactions out of washington u.s. officials believe it was a surface to air missile that shot down the malaysian plane over ukraine the u.s. is not pointing the blame think there just yet president obama spoke with the ukrainian leader. we can be sure that the blame game in the coming days and weeks is going to be vicious there are questions as to who had the capability to do this the ukrainian military certainly has the capability a launch like that would require a team of specialists as we hear from many experts and there is another question why was this malaysian airline flying over the conflict zone we know that u.s. airlines had been avoiding the area for some time precisely because it was deemed unsafe what kind of instructions that this plane would see from the ukrainian air traffic control and what exactly was happening inside the cockpit just moments

before the tragedy hopefully we'll get more answers when investigators get hold of that black box of course one of the main questions at this point is who is going to investigate this the u.n. secretary general spoke out calling for an international investigation one of the concerns moving forward is that the investigation could eventually be politicized the blame game is for lawn in the media even before any facts have been established . my colleague sean thomas was speaking with antiwar coalition activist eugene puryear talking about the international investigation ultimately the end of the day is a very complicated task but typically when it takes place in a war zone. we have a lot of issues i mean one of this is a war zone who should handle the black box and which way it went where will it be done and who will be able to take it will be considered a neutral arbiter so i think this could it even though it is a land crash drag out in a in a very long bashing the same way we saw the malaysian airliner that went down over

the sea did because there are so many questions at stake regarding who exactly can be considered a new tool in the arbiter to really examine this situation and that i think is going to be highly up in the air as we move forward well that's that's another talking point of course and another one is that the wreckage is i spread over what is effectively a conflict so many of ukraine how difficult is that going to make any investigation which starts by any investigating group. i think it's going to make it very difficult because certainly in the context of a battlefield with the changing and fluid. all of the various interested parties and in fact just the difficulty of moving people who are neutral in and out in large numbers bringing specialist then how are you going to fly the men are you going to drive the men how are they going to come what will both sides demand in terms of making sure that people are who they say they are may think there are a lot of logistical difficulties here which i think really will deep in the blame game in every way because what's going to happen is because of these different

difficulties the rumors will be much more right i think because it'll be very difficult for us to get a clear picture and it could take some time to really develop a true investigative team to put the facts together in your work with the anti war coalition what can you how can you see this playing out in this is if this turns out to be a tragic case of war or conflict crossing over into civilian lives really from regions that have nothing to do with the situation happening in ukraine what type of a reaction is the public going to give i think certainly from my perspective and from our perspective there is the actions of the kiev government are certainly quite provocative and there's been any number of reports of significant workarounds there and certainly they're very exhaustive big offensive here as deep in the conflict i think in ukraine and around the world this is again another example of how these relentless drives and pushes to war and in this case when i was heavily

motivated by the united states in the west pushing the ukraine to the brink because of their their clash or their differences with russia it should show us yet again that these militaristic postures lead to tragedies that war inherently breach tragedies and we don't really internalize that we'll continue to face situations you both like this and in other words. i should say you know while the malaysian plane crash is dominating world headlines are events of certainly taking a turn for the worse. in gaza israel's launched a massive ground operation and one of its soldiers has been killed it's the first israeli military death in the campaign which began late on thursday and early friday there have been heavy bombardments across gaza with locals reporting tanks crossing the border. says it needs to destroy tunnels being used by hamas militants to infiltrate israel israeli ground troops backed by air and naval forces and the u.n. has called for an immediate end to the violence from both sides. the ground campaign

has led to casualties in gaza as well these images we're looking at show the bodies of three children who were reportedly hit by artillery fire there among some twenty palestinians who have died since this ground offensive began reporter gary. we understand that one of the primary objectives of the operation is to destroy the tunnel infrastructure which is used by the fighters here israel sees this as a counterterrorism operation i spoke to one of the hamas. spokespersons and they said that israel's operation will also massively result in large number of civilian casualties and he described israel's intent towards gaza as deliberately going after gaza's civilian population it's not clear at the moment exactly to what scale this ground invasion or incursion is going to materialize but we do know that there have been incursions into the northern area of the strip specifically at least the

beit hanoun area we've also received unconfirmed reports that as a result of those incursions there have been specific casualties as a result of those ground troops moving in. and the israeli operation follows days of shellings with hamas launching rockets in return nearly two hundred fifty five students have been killed most of them civilians including dozens of children and there was a short humanitarian truce on thursday the exchange of fire resumed as soon as it ended. or after a very short break here on r.t. international we're back with the latest updates on the plane crash breaking news out of eastern ukraine live from moscow this is r.t. international.

but the stability. of the mississippi. you called so quick. look on the polish it. was made a. plague . dramas that can't be ignored. stories others refused to notice. faces changed lights never.

told pictures of today's los angeles from rugs to blow. up to. fifty. people with autism. attention great contributions. to society and we're beginning to see organizations schools. businesses and otherwise seeking out and hiring people with autism. i'm abby martin the stories we cover here are not going here in the right sort of big story extreme headlines and talk there's a reason they don't want you to now. trying to raise that we should leave now let's break the set.

an outpouring of grief around the world after a malaysian airlines passenger jet crashes in east ukraine and killing all two hundred ninety eight on board well the leaders calling for an unimpeded international investigation. p.f. and i'm t. government forces are accusing each other of bringing down the plane we've got to look at the blame game. thanks for joining us here on r.t. international i.