MOSCOW — A surface-to-air missile downed a Malaysia Airlines jet in a separatist-controlled corner of eastern Ukraine on Thursday, prompting the Ukrainian government to accuse pro-Russian rebels of committing an “act of terror” that killed all 298 people on board.
U.S. intelligence officials confirmed, but could not identify the origins of, the missile attack that led to the deadliest incident in modern memory of the downing of a civilian passenger plane.
One Ukrainian government official, however, said the Boeing 777 traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur appeared to have been hit by a Russian-made advanced missile system that recently came into the hands of the pro-Moscow separatists waging a bloody uprising in the east.
Rescue workers plied water over the smoldering remains, which landed in a rare rural patch of eastern Ukraine where the crash site appeared to be a ghastly scene of twisted metal and bodies.
In Amsterdam, a gasp went up at the news conference at Schiphol airport when it was announced that 154 Dutch passengers had been on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
The airline’s senior vice president, Huib Gorter, read out a list of passenger nationalities that included 27 Australians as the next-largest group. All the airplane’s crew was Malaysian, as were 28 passengers. The nationalities of 41 passengers had not been established at the time.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said “a number of passengers” were traveling to the 20th annual International AIDS Conference in Melbourne beginning Sunday. Some of the world’s foremost researchers were thought to have been on the flight.
The dramatic loss of yet another Malaysian Airlines flight happened six months after the enigmatic disappearance of the same carrier’s Flight 370 in March.
A recording provided by Ukrainian Security Service purportedly captured separatists conferring about the attack. The Washington Post could not independently verify the authenticity of the recording.
One voice on the tape — identified by the Ukrainian intelligence agency as Igor Bezler, one of the leaders in the pro-Russian separatist movement in eastern Ukraine — says a phrase in Russian that can be translated either as “we have just shot down a plane” or “they have just down the plane.”
The attack, denied by some rebel leaders who insisted they did not have the capabilities to stage such a strike, appeared to propel to a pivotal new phase the Ukraine crisis.
Ukrainian authorities, given permission by the rebels to enter the crash site late Thursday, combed through the wreckage scattered near the city of Hrabove.
“We have managed to identify 30 corpses,” said Konstantin Batozsky, adviser to Donetsk regional governor Serhiy Taruta. “They are scattered in a range of four kilometers around. It’s absolutely horrible.”
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak demanded a full, independent investigation and said the United States had offered its assistance. Several world leaders called for an international investigation.
“This is a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia,” Razak said.
The investigation, however, might be hampered by the whereabouts of the plane’s black boxes. Earlier in the day, the rebels claimed to have found them and were preparing to ship them to Moscow for analysis.
Russian President Vladimir Putin put the blame for the Malaysia Airlines crash squarely on Ukraine.
“Certainly the state over whose territory this happened bears responsibility for this terrible tragedy,” Putin said at a meeting with advisers. “This tragedy would not have happened if there was peace in this land.”
President Barack Obama said his administration was “working to determine whether there were American citizens on board” the downed plane.
Obama said U.S. national security officials are in close contact with the Ukrainian government.
Hours later, a U.S. official said American intelligence agencies had confirmed that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said government analysts were scrambling to determine who fired the missile.
The rebels have shot down numerous Ukrainian military aircraft using short-range surface-to-air missiles. Experts said such a system would probably not have the capacity to reach a plane flying at 33,000 feet, as Flight 17 was said to be at the time of the attack.
Ukrainian authorities have said the rebels recently obtained Russian-made Buk anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles. Rebel spokesmen denied responsibility, shifting blame to Ukrainian government forces. The Ukrainian government said it had nothing to do with downing the plane.
LIVE BLOG: Malaysia Airlines Flight #MH17 shot down over Ukraine