| MH17: New evidence on downing of passenger plane over Ukraine |
Villagers in eastern Ukraine have said they saw a missile flying directly overhead just before a Malaysian airliner, Malaysian Airlines MH17, was shot out of the sky on July 17 last year, providing the most detailed accounts to date that suggest it was fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels.
The accounts from four villagers of Chervonyi Zhovten, which was then, and is now, controlled by the rebels, are significant because they indicate the rocket was in the early stages of its flight path.
That would mean it must have been launched from rebel ground nearby, challenging the suggestion of Moscow and the separatists that the plane was brought down by the Ukrainian military. At the time, the nearest Ukrainian-held area was about six kilometres away.
Ukraine and its Western allies have said it was the rebels who shot down the airliner, using a Russian-made Buk anti-aircraft missile system. All 298 people on board were killed, including 27 Australians.
Until now, videos, photographs and accounts from residents have pointed to a Buk battery being delivered to the rebel-held town of Snizhne, seven kilometres north of Chervonyi Zhovten, on July 17, and then driven away from the area some time later. Its precise location at the time the plane was shot down has never been confirmed.
Now one of the villagers has said that a missile battery was positioned in a field near Chervonyi Zhovten on the day the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed to earth. A former rebel fighter corroborated this. A top rebel commander, Andrei Purgin, said the separatists did not have any weapon capable of downing a plane at cruise altitude.
"You can come up with whatever you want. The most that we, the rebels, were operating is the PZRK [shoulder-launched missile system]. The ceiling for the PZRK is up to four kilometres," he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was up to a Dutch-led international investigation to determine what happened. "The Russian side awaits that information impatiently", he said.
The downing of the plane was a turning point in the conflict in Ukraine, in which about 6,000 people have been killed since last April. It persuaded many Western governments that the Russian-backed rebels were a dangerous threat and stiffened their resolve to impose new sanctions on separatist leaders and on Moscow.
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