A picture taken on July 17, 2014 shows wreckages of the malaysian airliner carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur after it crashed, in rebel-held east Ukraine.
AFP/Reuters
Pro-Russian rebels fighting central Kiev authorities claimed on Thursday that the Malaysian airline that crashed in Ukraine had been shot down by a Ukrainian jet.
"Witnesses watching the flight of the Boeing 777 passenger plane saw it being attacked by a battle plane of the Ukrainian forces," the government of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic said in a statement.
"After that the passenger plane split in two in the air and fell on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic," said the statement, adding that the Ukrainian jet was shot down afterwards.
"Terrorist act" downed Malaysian plane : Ukraine president
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko believes a "terrorist act" was the cause of a Malaysian airlines passenger plane crashing on Thursday, his press secretary said.
"Poroshenko thinks this of the plane that was brought down: it is not an incident, not a catastrophe, but a terrorist act," Svatoslav Tsegolko said.