that. i don't know very well either of the. women in the world. and these images you see right here showing the bodies of three children who were reportedly hit by artillery fire there are among at least twenty palestinians who have died since this ground offensive began now and on friday heavy bombardments across gaza with locals reporting tanks crossing the border tel aviv says it needs to destroy tunnels being used by hamas militants to infiltrate israel already ground troops up fast by support in the air and navy the u.n. meantime has called for an immediate end to the violence from both sides journalist ari fia has more on the situation. 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 automatically result in a 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 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. follows days of

shellings with hamas launching rockets in return overall nearly two hundred sixty palestinians have been killed most of them civilians and dozens of children and there was a short humanitarian truce on thursday the exchange of fire resumed as soon as it is. good to have you with us here on r.t. international today a reminder of our breaking news story right now an investigation is now want to find what caused a malaysia airlines a passenger plane to crash in eastern ukraine on thursday all two hundred ninety eight people on board the boeing triple seven were killed some of the locals who witnessed the crash say they saw bodies falling to earth. corpses are scattered across a debris field covering fifteen kilometers the remains of fewer than half of the victims have been recovered so far and 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 it 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 falling over me it broke into pieces the main part fell here and exploded although. 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 see 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 falling its wing was falling off and then we saw black smoke and that's all. the order

came down on the four year old my brother is there at the moment there are many people and degree everywhere you found a ticket from amsterdam from malaysia everything is scattered around it simply horrific so many bodies he couldn't even count them. 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 the russian airspace ukrainian president petro poroshenko quickly accusing antigovernment fighters of downing the plane with a rocket calling the incident a terrorist attack the militia groups deny this saying they don't have access to weapons capable of taking out a plane of the altitude this one was flying at local activists say they have found the flight recorders amid the wreckage. the nationalities of the majority of people on board the crash malaysian airliner have now been identified more than half of

the passengers one hundred fifty four to be exact dutch another thirty eight victims malaysian including the fifteen crewmembers also on board nine britons four germans three filipinos and a canadian in a series of pictures now from kuala lumpur families gathered in the country's main airport shortly after they found out what's happened and many became angry demanding to see the passenger manifest desperate for news of their loved ones so worst hit has been the netherlands which is lost more than one hundred and fifty of its citizens relatives are now desperate to find out what happened to their loved ones as artie's polly boyko reports from. relatives and friends would have gone to bed last night hoping that everything that took place yesterday was just a dreadful nightmare but poland 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 steeple

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 also know that a number of the passengers were headed to melbourne for an international aid conference with 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 holland. and from our sister network r.t. spanish correspondent francisco go to at the scene of the crash earlier he sent this report in the early hours of the morning. the situation in this kilometer that

is around is that you can see several pieces of the aircraft and also several bodies that the militia antique here said that they don't have the capability to shoot an aircraft who is in a distance of ten thousand meters and they were saying that is the ukrainian army forces who shot down this aircraft of my lashon airlines the government open an investigation and is cleared that this accident has important political connotations because it is not just an accident of an aircraft because of the bad moreover it's a situation that is very important because here very close to the war there in the last days there was a big combat between the militia. and they were grania and forces earlier in a phone conversation with barack obama russian president vladimir putin stressed

the importance of an immediate and unconditional cease fire in ukraine the leaders of the self-proclaimed on your script public in eastern ukraine have already announced a humanitarian truce will be implemented to allow investigators access well sort of gay zydeco from the interstate aviation committee he says an international commission must now be allowed to investigate. which it was most understanding the difficulty of the situation in the area of the incident we consider it necessary to create an international investigation commission which could be established under the authority of the international civil aviation organization and to pass on to it all the flight recorders. go and one after another major air carriers are diverting their planes around ukrainian airspace among them air france. as well europe's transport agency euro control has advised all e.u. carriers to avoid ukraine's airspace is more with artie's peter all over 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 boyko in 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 as 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 monitors air traffic control and to give guidelines and traffic control of rule eastern ukraine though an absolute no go area until we find out anything more about what's happened with this terrible tragedy that touched lives across europe. the instability and conflict in eastern ukraine certainly making it difficult to confirm some of the claims and details that continue to pour in using what we do have however we've pieced together the events in chronological order have a look at there's a twelve fifteen pm local time flight m.h. seventy with two hundred ninety eight passengers and crew on board to call from amsterdam airport on a schedule 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 falling over a wide area anti-government forces arrived and secured the crash site within the hour confirming that there were no survivors by seven pm local time both kia than the anti-government sides had washed their hands of responsibility the government claimed that they're not carry out any anti air operations while a self defense spokesperson says that they simply did not have the weapons that could reach that higher by ten pm ukrainian time fighters in these claimed to have found the black box the flight's data recorder promising to hand the derby to international investigators more again as the. u.s.

intelligence officials claiming the plane was downed by a surface to air missile but have not specifically blamed either side the american vice president joe biden said that a team of specialists will be sent to assist ukrainian authorities with the investigation a guy in asia can following more reactions from 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 thing or 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 airliner 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 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 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 full on in the media even before any facts have been established . some of the accusations against a government fighters are based on a tweet which was reportedly posted have been deleted from the social media account of the donetsk people's republic the tweet was allegedly a boast from the government forces that they had 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 kiev's general prosecutor actually denied that and another allegation coming from ukrainian officials is

based around what they say is an intercepted phone call between anti-government why it is indeed they purportedly admit to shooting down the plane. if this passenger jet was shot down there are a few weapons in the region able to do so one a possible example is the book surface to air missile system. several former soviet countries have the weapon including ukraine and it does have the ability to intercept up to twenty four targets at the same time with a distance of up to forty five kilometers and an altitude of twenty five kilometers in fact its projectiles travel up to twelve hundred meters per second as yet there's no confirmation this missile system was the cause of the crash we spoke to charlie mcgrath here in r.t. international the founder of wide awake news he believes that western media has already very quickly chosen a scapegoat in light of the fact that the nearly three hundred people just died i hate to jump into bashing but since you asked the question i will this is

a western backed regime inside a key appear chico is absolutely put there by the united states by the e.u. by the international monetary fund they say you know like i said the ukraine is not in the forefront of the people's mind in the west it's going to be now it when i was monitoring coverage on this earlier today they give you two options for what is happening inside ukraine it's either russia's fault or pro russian separatists fault you know they're forgetting the fact that ukraine right now the ukrainian government is showing civilians is showing in urban areas and hundreds and hundreds of millions have already been killed at the killed at the hands of the ukrainian government so you know the fact that the media is not reporting the truth on the ground is not surprising at all because this is the western media who is toeing the western propaganda line well ukraine's army does have some history of shooting down civilian planes within a culture that by now looking back at a fatal mistake jury military exercises in two thousand and one. case has bit of

similarities to the incident indeed it happened thirteen years ago two thousand and one and it told were a russian plane was carrying sixty six passengers as well as twelve crew members and was flying from tel of based in israel to novosibirsk now somewhere at about the black sea it happened that the russian ground control center reported that its last contact with the chance to ask the plane disappeared from the reader and very shortly after it was revealed that the plane went down into the sea of course of the investigation was launched in there were conflicting reports and i do remember there was one when the pilot of the armenian plane that was flying above pretty much the same area said that he actually saw the russian jad before crashing into the sea in his so how the jet exploded it's the number one reason

behind the incident was a possible terrorist attack that's what the investigators first thought but then it turned out that the crash happened due to ukrainian a missile that broad down the plane and that happened accidentally during military exercises military drills happening at the same time in a while basically this seems area now i have to mention that ukrainian military forces really didn't know i had quite heated the that they were at fault however international. investigation was carried out in international society acknowledged that was the fact that there was a ukrainian ukrainian missed that brought down that russian plane and that happened back in two thousand and one. while the malaysian plane crash is dominating worldwide headlines of its own for the worse and goes to israel has launched a massive groan been very one of its soldiers was being killed before i leave

military death in this part of a campaign which began late one day with the offensive was also let the palestinian casualties as well. that. i don't know very well other than that the. good. news. and let's show you these images right here literally the bodies of three children reportedly hit by artillery fire they are among at least twenty palestinians who have died since this ground offensive began early friday there were heavy bombardments across gaza with locals reporting tanks crossing the border israel says it needs to destroy tunnels being used by hamas militants to infiltrate the country has sent in ground troops backed by the navy forces rockets are still being

fired by militants into israel and the united nations has called for an immediate end to the violence from both sides more on the situation now with reporter how we feel. 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 a 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 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 the israeli operation follows days of shelling with hamas launching rockets in return overall nearly two hundred sixty palestinians are being killed most of them civilians and dozens of children in short humanitarian truce on thursday with strangers fire resumed as soon as it. gets give you a reminder of our breaking news story now here on r.t. international investigation now underway to find out what caused a malaysia airlines passenger plane to crash in eastern ukraine on thursday all two hundred ninety eight people on board the boeing triple seven were killed some of the locals who witnessed the crash say they saw bodies raining from the sky there and corpses are scattered across an area covering fifteen kilometers the remains of fewer than a half of the victims have been recovered so far 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 it 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 promote bob we're used to the sound of shooting here but then there was a loud clap i looked up and saw something falling over me it broke into pieces the main part well here it exploded although. 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 see here and there. so they looked abundant we were swimming and we heard three distinct trogs actually not sure it's more like explosions and then we saw the plane from its wing was

crawling off and then we saw black smoke and that's all. down on the four year old my brother is there at the moment there are many people and degree everywhere you found a ticket from malaysia everything is generally around it's simply horrific so many bodies he couldn't even count them 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 head to russian air space ukrainian president petro poroshenko accusing antigovernment fighters of downing the plane with a rocket he calls it all the terrorist attack but militia groups are denying it they say they don't have access to weapons capable of taking out a plane at that altitude at the while the plane was flying at local activists say they have found the flight recorders and now amid the wreckage. the nationalities

of the majority of those on board the crashed malaysian airliner have now been identified more than a half of them one hundred fifty four to be precise were dutch and other thirty eight were malaysian including the fifteen crewmembers also on the plane with nine britons four germans three filipinos and one canadian. and let's give you the latest pictures from kuala lumpur families gathered in the country's main airport shortly after they found out what happened and he became angry demanding to see the passenger manifest desperate for news of their loved ones. so worst hit has been the netherlands which has lost more than one hundred fifty of its citizens relatives and desperate to find out what's happened to their loved ones as a boy could now reports from. relatives and friends would have gone to bed last night hoping that everything that took place yesterday was just a dreadful nightmare but poland 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 not 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 also know that a number of the passengers were headed to melbourne for an international aids conference with 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 holland. spanish correspondent francisco he was at the scene of the crash earlier this

morning here's his report. it was shown in this kilometers that is is that you can see several pieces of the aircraft and also several bodies that the militia antique here said that they don't have the capability to shoot an aircraft who is in a distance of ten thousand meters and they were saying that is the ukrainian army forces who shot down this aircraft of my lashon airlines the government open an investigation and is cleared that this accident has important political connotations because it is not just an accident of an aircraft because of the bad moreover it's a situation that is very important because here very close to the war there in the last days there was a big comeback between the militia. and the granny and forces

international investigators haven't arrived at the precise crash location yet ukrainian authorities and some western media have been quick to blame fighters were important i are now taking us through some of the perhaps 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 accusation some u.s. officials are doing their best to feel if it is a result of either separatist or russian action mistakingly believing there was a ukrainian war plane i think there's going to be held today and there should be

there does seem to be a growing awareness that it probably had to be russian insurgence now how we determine that will require some forensics but then if 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 u.s. 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. legal expert alexander macoris he says that there should be no rush to put forward random theories about what exactly brought the plane down. there we're looking at at least a couple of days if not even a babs a week or even more before a proper full thought really researched investigation takes place at the information i have heard is that the people in the dawn bass in donetsk are a fact at this moment in time saying 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. and one after another major air carriers are devoting their planes around ukrainian

airspace among them air france lamb and looked and so just to name a few europe's transport agency euro control has advised all e.u. carriers to avoid ukraine's aspace is artie's pre-drawn of from berlin because of 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 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 and 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 as an outpouring of condolence and grief here in europe as all car is just about have said that they are going to try and employed all of ukrainian airspace. control who are the european body that monitor traffic control and give guidelines and air traffic control of rule eastern ukraine though an absolute no go area until we find out anything more about what's happened with this terrible tragedy that touched lives across europe thanks for joining us here on r.t. international today i'm wrong live in moscow a very short break we're back with the latest updates on the plane crash in eastern ukraine. well. science technology innovation all the latest developments from

around russia we've got the future covered. right from the scene. first for you and i think pictures. on our reporters twitter. and instagram. to be in the know. on mom. choose your language. with. some of. the consensus get to. choose the opinions that degrade.