Answers Demanded After Jet 'Blown Out Of Sky'

World leaders are demanding an international investigation after a passenger plane was allegedly shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur at an altitude of 33,000ft (10,000m) when contact was lost at 2.15pm GMT on Thursday.

An adviser to the Ukrainian interior ministry said the Boeing 777 was hit by a Buk ground-to-air missile. US intelligence also concluded a surface-to-air missile had brought the plane down.

Among the 283 passengers and 15 crew on board were nine Britons, 154 Dutch, 43 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos and one Canadian.

An emergency worker at the scene of the crash

Three infants are among the dead, and the nationalities of 41 passengers have yet to be verified.

Many of the passengers were on their way to an International Aids Society (IAS) conference in Melbourne, and the Society has said they may have included one of its former presidents, Joep Lange.

Plumes of thick, black smoke could be seen rising high into the air near the village of Grabovo, Donetsk, where the airliner came down.

Flames rise from wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines jet

It was said to have split in half on impact, with burning wreckage scattered across a vast area.

Britain has joined the US and other countries in calling for an international probe into the disaster. US President Barack Obama has said it should be "prompt, full, credible and unimpeded".

The Interfax news agency has reported that the plane's 'black box' flight recorder has already been recovered.

Flight MH17 taking off at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands

Officials in Kiev were quick to deny any involvement in the crash, with President Petro Poroshenko lamenting what he called an "act of terrorism".

US Vice-President Joe Biden said the jet appeared to have been deliberately "blown out of the sky", with an unnamed US official blaming Ukrainian separatists backed by Russia.

However, separatist leader Alexander Borodai said the aircraft was shot down by Ukrainian government forces - a claim backed by another separatist who told Reuters the rebels did not have weapons capable of shooting down a plane at such height.

Sky's Katie Stallard, in Moscow, said Igor Strelkov, the commander of the pro-Russian Donetsk People's Republic, appeared to have boasted about the incident on social media.

In one deleted message recovered by Sky News, he allegedly wrote: "We warned you not to fly over our sky."

Ukraine's security service also released what it claimed was a recording of an intercepted phone call between two Russian military intelligence officers, discussing the downing of the plane.

Armed Russian separatists inspect the wreckage

Sky's Mark White said the aircraft had been flying just 1,000ft (300m) above a zone deemed "unsuitable for civilian aircraft".

However Malaysia Airlines has said the route taken by flight MH17 had been declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

The operator, still reeling from the loss of flight MH370 in March, has announced all its European flights will be taking alternative routes with immediate effect.

The wreckage was scattered over a wide area

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the incident was "absolutely unacceptable" and an "awful tragedy", but added: "This would not have happened if there were peace on this land ... and, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility."

The disaster is the latest in a series of reported attacks on planes in Ukrainian airspace and came a day after one of the country's Sukhoi-25 fighter jets was shot down.

The United Nations Security Council is to hold an emergency meeting on Ukraine later today.

A distressed woman waits for information in Kuala Lumpur

:: Malaysia Airlines has set up an emergency line for worried relatives: 00 6 037 884 1234.

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