The Netherlands and Australia are standing by to send police and troops to the site of the Malaysia Airlines crash in eastern Ukraine, in an attempt to finally secure the scene of the disaster, more than a week after the plane came down killing all 298 people on board.
Pro-Russia separatists in the area, who are accused of bringing down the plane using a surface-to-air missile, have said they would welcome international investigators but the presence of foreign forces in the volatile region presents challenges, with military confrontation between Ukraine's forces and rebels rumbling on in the immediate vicinity.
Of the dead, 193 were Dutch citizens and 28 were Australians. Many of the bodies were removed from the site by local emergency workers and transferred by train to Kharkiv, from where they are being flown in batches to the Netherlands. But observers say there are still human remains at the site and part of the task of the 40 Dutch police who are due to arrive will be to ensure that all the bodies and body parts are found.
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said on Friday that the contingent would be unarmed. "If we go with a big military presence, the situation could become more unstable than stable," he said.
The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, said his country was also ready to send police and had officers standing by in Europe, ready to travel to the site if agreement is achieved.
"This will be a police-led humanitarian mission," the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said in Kharkiv, where she has been overseeing the arrival and onward flights to the Netherlands for the remains. "And there will be body identification and forensic experts. And of course we will ensure they are safe, that they will have protection."
In the week since MH17 came crashing to the ground the site has remained unsecured, with open access to media and locals. So far, the only international monitors at the site have been observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), joined by a handful of international investigators. There has been anger at allegations of looting as well as suggestions that some of the rebels could be attempting to cover up potential evidence. Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE, said observers had found identity cards and credit cards at the site on Friday and added that people were seen moving parts of the fuselage.
A rebel fighter who arrived at the scene soon after the crash told the Guardian on Friday that he and his men had found locals looting items from the site and taking pieces of fuselage to sell as scrap metal.
The question of looting was again raised on Friday after a local woman apparently posted photographs on Instagram of herself wearing makeup apparently taken from the site. The photograph was geolocated to the town of Torez, near the crash site, and the caption was: "Mascara from Amsterdam, well, from the field if you know what I mean."
The Instagram account was later deleted after the woman received hundreds of angry messages. One user who initially "liked" the Instagram photograph confirmed to the Guardian that the account was real, but claimed the mascara was not stolen from the wreckage of MH17.
The most problematic element of the Dutch and Australian missions will be security. Although both Ukrainian forces and the rebels have promised to observe a ceasefire in the immediate area around the crash site, fighting close to the regional capital, Donetsk, has intensified in recent days, with heavy shelling audible even in the centre of Donetsk in the early hours of Friday morning. The president, Petro Poroshenko, is keen to end the insurgency in the east of the country before Ukraine's independence day on 24 August, but serious fighting will be required to dislodge the rebels from Donetsk, with inevitable civilian casualties.
Human Rights Watch said Grad rocket attacks had killed 16 people in Donetsk in recent days, in what "may constitute war crimes". The organisation said the evidence pointed to Ukrainian forces being responsible, despite denials in Kiev.
Both Russia and Ukraine are accusing the other of shelling across the border. Ukraine says Russia has carried out nightly shelling into its territory in recent days, and also accuses the Russians of shooting down Ukrainian planes from inside Russia.
In turn, Russia claimed the Ukrainians fired mortar rounds into Russia on Friday.
A statement from Russia's investigative committee said: "Those who shot from Ukraine carried out the shooting purposefully with an intent to kill Russian law enforcement officials.
"It was only the poor preparation of the Ukrainian military and the timely evacuation of law enforcement officers under the cover of armoured transport vehicles that did not allow the shooters to realise their intention."
Also on Friday, the Pentagon said it believed Russia was planning to supply multiple launch rocket systems to the rebels in east Ukraine, indicating that satellite pictures showed the systems approaching the border and a transfer was expected "in the very near future … potentially today".
A TransAsia Airways plane has crashed after failing to make an emergency landing in Taiwan killing 51 people and injuring 7, according to local reports.
The passenger plane, carrying 58 people, caught fire upon crash landing, striking residential buildings in Taiwan's Penghu island. The flight departed from the capital Taipei at around 5pm local time and was headed for Penghu Magong airport.
Pictures from the scene showed firefighters using flashlights to look at wreckage in the darkness.
Aviation officials said flight GE222 aborted its initial landing and then crashed, local media reported.
Taiwan was battered by Typhoon Matmo with heavy rains and strong winds going up to 173 kph (107 mph), shutting financial markets and schools and leaving one person killed.
The disappeared Air Algerie flight AH5017 has crashed in Niger after flying through violent storms, it has been confirmed.
Algerian television station Elnahar and Reuters confirmed the plane went down due to bad weather.
The region was badly affected by violent storms and it was earlier said the plane was rerouted while it was flying over Mali.
The plane crashed after passing the capital of Niger and it is presumed all 116 people on board have been killed. The flight was said to have been found near Niamey, the capital of Niger.
There were six crew members, mostly Spanish, and 110 passengers, comprising mainly French people, when the plane went down.
The flight, which departed from the Burkinan capital city of Ouagadougou, lost contact with ground control while it was cruising above Malian airspace and was said to be an hour away from the Algerian border.
The flight was scheduled to land at its destination at about 05:10 local time but there was no communication with the ground, despite officials trying to make contact for six hours.
An Air Algerie flight travelling from Burkina Faso to Algiers has disappeared from the radar, apparently while flying above Malian airspace.
The aircraft, believed to be an MD-83 passenger jet, lost contact 50 minutes after takeoff.
"Air navigation services have lost contact with an Air Algerie plane Thursday flying from Ouagadougou to Algiers, 50 minutes after takeoff," the airline said, according to Algeria's APS news agency.
Air Algerie has put in place an "emergency plan," the agency reported.
Spanish airline Swiftair was said to be operating the flight chartered by Air Algerie. Swiftair has confirmed there were 110 passengers and six crew members aboard the aircraft.
Flight AH 5017 was not visible on Flightradar24, a live-tracking website for all the planes, since it is out of coverage area, said the service.
DONETSK: Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday handed over two black boxes recovered from the crash site of the MH17 jet to Malaysian officials at a press conference.
They also announced a ceasefire within a 10 kilometre (six mile) radius around the crash site to allow international investigators to safely access the vast area where the Malaysia Airlines flight was downed Thursday.
"We have decided to hand the black boxes over to Malaysian experts," the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Borodai, told journalists.
The Malaysian team of experts and representatives of the separatist group then signed a protocol before the bright orange boxes were handed over.
"On behalf of the Malaysian government I thank the government of the Donetsk Republic for handing us the two black boxes which are the property of Malaysia," said a member of the Malaysian team.
"We have not found the black boxes from flight MH370 (disappeared over the Indian Ocean in March), so are happy to be able to recover these.
"I see that the black boxes are intact with only minor damage."
One of the boxes will contain all conversation in the cockpit and another all flight data.
However, it is unclear how useful this will be in determining what happened to the flight, which is believed by Kiev and world leaders to have been shot down by a surface-to-air-missile.
The Russia-backed separatist rebels who control the area where the plane went down are suspected of having fired the missile, however they blame the Ukrainian military.
There has been an outpouring of global outrage over lack of access to the site, and fears the rebels have tampered with evidence.
Borodai gave in to demands for a ceasefire to allow investigators full access to the site.
"We will order a ceasefire in a area of 10 kilometres around" the site of the disaster, which left 298 people dead, he said.
Malaysian officials were accompanying a refrigerated train transporting the remains of the passengers to the town of Kharkiv, controlled by the government in Kiev.
The US has pointedly criticised Russian arming of rebels in Ukraine as the world demanded answers over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by a suspected Russian-made missile, resulting in the death of all 298 people on board the civilian airliner.
The White House stopped short of directly blaming Russia for the plane’s destruction but linked its remarks on the disaster to the Kremlin’s support for separatists in Ukraine, urging Vladimir Putin’s government to stop inflaming the situation in the country and take "concrete steps" towards de-escalation.
The huge loss of life threatens to have wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences, coming just after the US imposed further sanctions on Russia for continuing to provide weapons to the rebels.
The former US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made some of the most potent remarks in a television interview, saying there were strong indications Russian-backed militia were to blame and action was needed to "put [Vladimir] Putin on notice that he has gone too far and we are not going to stand idly by".
Clinton called for the EU to increase sanctions on Russia, while the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott demanded that Russia explain the disaster as it “now seems certain it’s been brought down by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile”.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said it was too soon to make a decision on tougher sanctions. "The events with the plane, as far as I remember, were not even 24 hours ago and at the moment we need to sort out an independent investigation."
There were 173 Dutch nationals on board the plane, along with 44 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine passengers believed to be from the UK, four each from Germany and Belgium, three from the Philippines, one Canadian and one from New Zealand. The nationalities of 20 passengers have not yet been verified. A group of international HIV/Aids experts flying to Melbourne were among those killed.
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said: "We are working through passenger data, cross-checking it and referencing it to establish exactly the numbers and identities of those British nationals."
The Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, said the news marked “a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia”, referring to the earlier disappearance without a trace of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. He said those responsible for tragedy the must be held responsible.
Flags were lowered to half-mast in the Netherlands and Australia.
The Dutch flag at half-mast at Schiphol airport Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Kiev and Moscow have blamed each other for the disaster.
Putin ordered Russian military and civilian agencies to co-operate with any investigation but, according to a Kremlin statement, said the "state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy."
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, said on Friday there was no chance the missile was of Ukrainian military origin. He said the Ukrainian army did not have such missiles in the area, and said none had been seized by separatist fighters in recent weeks.
The jet was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday when it was blown apart and fell in a shower of fiery wreckage over the village of Grabovo, part of the area controlled by pro-Russia separatists.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Friday that separatists had agreed to provide assistance to those investigating the crash of the plane and would ensure safe access for international experts visiting the site.
Defence and security experts said the Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system, known to be in the hands of pro-Russia fighters in Ukraine, was most likely used.
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, said the plane appeared to have been "blown out of the sky", while the Ukrainian security services released anaudio recording said to be rebel commanders discussing the fact that their forces were responsible with Russian officers.
The UN security council it is to meet on Friday as calls mount for an international response. “There is clearly a need for a full, transparent and international investigation,” said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, sending his condolences to the victims’ families.
A Malaysian mother reacts after seeing her daughter's name on the list of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines MH17. Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's transport minister Liow Tiong Lai stressed that MH17 was following "the right route on the right path" amid a barrage of questions from local and foreign reporters as to why Malaysia Airlines would have chosen to fly over a war zone. Qantas, the Australian carrier, said it had been steering clear of the area by 400 nautical miles for several months.
"It is many years that we have taken the same route and many other countries take the same route," he said. He stressed that some 15 of 16 Asia-Pacific Airlines fly "this route over Ukraine" and added: "European airlines also use the same route, and traverse the same airspace. In the hours before the incident, a number of other passenger aircraft from different carriers used the same route."
He also said that there had been "no last-minute instructions" given to the pilots to change the route.
The European air traffic control body, Eurocontrol, said Ukrainian authorities had banned aircraft from flying at 32,000ft or below and the doomed aircraft had been cruising above that, at 33,000ft – however this apparently still left it within range of the sophisticated surface-to-air weaponry that pro-Russia forces have been using recently to target Ukrainian military aircraft. All civilian flights have now been barred from eastern Ukraine.
The field next to the tiny hamlet was a scene of charred earth and twisted metal as shocked local people milled around the scene. Body parts belonging to the 298 on board were strewn around. The body of what appeared to be a young woman had been flung about 500m from the centre of the crash.
US government officials confirmed to media outlets that a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane. US intelligence was reportedly still working to determine the exact location from which the missile was fired, and whether it was on the Russian or the Ukrainian side of the border.
Rebels in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics have shot down several Ukrainian planes and helicopters in recent weeks. But they insisted they had no part in the downing of MH17, claiming instead that Ukrainian fire was responsible.
Ukraine's SBU security services released a recording, which could not immediately be verified, of what it said were rebel commanders saying they had shot down a plane and then discovering with horror it had been a civilian jet.
Ukraine security services recording said to reveal pro-Russia separatists admitting they shot down plane.
On the ground in Grabovo a strong smell of aviation fuel and burnt rubber hung in the air as dozens of pro-Russian separatist fighters milled around the area in which workers from the emergency services were sifting through the wreckage. A dozen fire engines were on the scene.
One local resident, Alexander, had been working in a field a few hundred metres from the crash site and thought the aircraft was going to fall on top of him. Another farmer said he was on his tractor when he heard a loud bang. "Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two – there was thick black smoke," he said.
In a conflict that has not been short of dreadful twists, this was by far the most shocking and most gruesome to date. The 298 people on board MH17 had no connection to the fighting – their international flight was simply travelling through airspace above the battle zone.
Malaysia Airlines announces the nationalities of those on board flight MH17.
Throughout the Ukraine conflict the versions of violent incidents provided by Kiev and the Donetsk rebels have diverged wildly, with each side blaming the other for loss of life and the shelling of residential areas.
Now, with such a huge and unexpected loss of life, the stakes are immeasurably higher, and both sides again rushed to claim the other was at fault.
Those blaming pro-Russia rebels for the attack pointed to a post on a social media site attributed to a top rebel commander which claimed to have downed a Ukrainian transport plane around the same time as the first reports of MH17's disappearance surfaced. The post was later deleted.
The US and EU have heavily criticised Russia for providing the separatists in eastern Ukraine with logistical and military support, leading to a new set of White House sanctions against Russian companies, introduced on Wednesday, as rhetoric coming out of both Washington and Moscow has led to talk of a new cold war. Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Guardian that any allegations of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash were "stupidity".
He said the Kremlin would not make a further statement because "no one knows" who is responsible.
Asked about the possibility of further US sanctions, Peskov said he could not rule it out: "The United States has recently been conducting a very nonconstructive policy and their actions are very unpredictable," he said.
Putin, who on Thursday returned to Russia from a summit of the Brics nations in Brazil, informed Barack Obama about the incident.
"The Russian leader informed the US president of the report from air traffic controllers that the Malaysian plane had crashed on Ukrainian territory, which had arrived immediately before the phone call," said a statement released by the Kremlin.
According to the statement, the pair spent most of the conversation discussing the deterioration of US-Russian relations, and Putin expressed his "serious disappointment" over the latest round of US sanctions against Russian companies.
Later Putin chaired a meeting on the Russian economy which began with a minute's silence and laid the blame for the crash at Ukraine's door: "There is no doubt that the nation over whose airspace this happened bears responsibility for the terrible tragedy," he said.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, tweeted: "I'm shocked and saddened by the Malaysian air disaster. Officials from across Whitehall are meeting to establish the facts."
The crash came four months after another Malaysia Airlines flight, MH370, vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, two-thirds of them Chinese citizens. It has yet to be found despite a huge search.
Ukrainian president says shooting down of plane is a warning for the world on Russian aggression.
Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military specialist at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, agreed that the plane would almost certainly have been shot with a Buk, a vehicle-mounted missile system first developed in the Soviet era. The Malaysian aircraft,was beyond the range of Manpads – shoulder-launched missiles. Kalashnikov-carrying Russian sympathisers in Ukraine would not have had the expertise to fire them and would have needed either specialists who had "volunteered" their services from Russia or locally recruited specialists, he said, noting that the rebels had been firing at Ukrainian aircraft over the last week.
The Associated Press said one of its journalists had seen a similar launcher near the town of Snizhne earlier on Thursday.
Russia's state-owned Channel One avoided speculation of who might have been behind the plane crash in its first bulletins on the subject, while the Kremlin-friendly Life News, whose reporters were first on the scene, said it was likely to have been brought down by Ukrainian fire, claiming that the rebels did not have any missile systems with the capacity to down a plane at that altitude.
However a report on the website of Russian state television from late June described how the rebels in Donetsk had taken control of a Ukrainian missile defence facility that was equipped with Buk systems. The report said that the rebels planned to "defend the sky over Donetsk" using the missiles.
On Thursday afternoon a social media site attributed to Igor Strelkov, a Russian citizen who has emerged as the commander of rebel forces in Donetsk, announced that the rebels had shot down an An-26 Ukrainian transport plane, and also that there was "information about a second plane". The post was later removed.
Audio was circulated on social media, apparently released by Ukrainian security services, purporting to be an intercepted conversation of pro-Russia rebels confirming they had shot down a civilian jet.
The conversation is apparently between a group leader and his superior and suggests that they initially thought they had brought down a military aircraft but later realised their error.
The group leader, "Demon", tells his boss: "A plane has just been shot down. [It was] 'Miner's' group. It crashed outside Enakievo. Our men went to search for and photograph it. It's smouldering."
After his men apparently inspect the crash site, Demon reports back. "Cossacks from the Chernunkhino checkpoint shot down the plane. The plane disintegrated in mid-air … they found the first body. It's a civilian."
He carries on: "I mean. It's definitely a civilian aircraft."
His superior, nicknamed "Greek", asks him: "Were there many people?"
Demon replies: "A fuckton. The debris rained right into the yards."
Greek asks: "What's the aircraft?" and is told: "I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't reached the main section. I only looked at where the bodies began to fall. There are remains of chair mounts, the chairs, the bodies."
Greek asks: "Any weapons there?" and Demon says: "None at all. Civilian things, medical stuff, towels, toilet paper." "Any documents?" asks Greek, and Demon, perhaps realising what has just happened, replies: "Yes, an Indonesian student from Thomson university [in the US]."
Pro-Russian separatists admit shooting down MH17 in phone conversation
Ukraine’s security agency (SBU) today released two telephone recordings which indicated that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian separatists.
The Kyiv Post, which published the telephone conversations, reported that the first telephone conversation made 20 minutes after the crash, was between Igor Bezler, identified as Russian intelligence and Vasili Geranin, a colonel in the Russian Federation separatist force.
Bezler says, “We have just shot down a plane,” and Vasili responds “Pilots, where are the pilots?”
Bezler:Gone to search for and photograph the plane. It's smoking.
Geranin:How many minutes ago?
Bezler:About 30 minutes ago.
In the second telephone conversation, about 40 minutes later, two militants names ‘Major’ and ‘Greek’ were heard discussing the attack, with one saying the aircraft ‘fell apart in the air’.
Major:These are Chernukhin folks who shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino.
Greek:Yes, Major.
Major:The plane fell apart in the air. In the area of Petropavlovskaya mine. The first “200” (code word for dead person). We have found the first “200”. A Civilian.
Greek:Well, what do you have there?
Major:In short, it was 100 percent a passenger (civilian) aircraft.
Greek:Are many people there?
Major:Holy sh__t! The debris fell right into the yards (of homes).
Greek:What kind of aircraft?
Major:I haven’t ascertained this. I haven’t been to the main sight. I am only surveying the scene where the first bodies fell. There are the remains of internal brackets, seats and bodies.
Greek:Is there anything left of the weapon?
Major:Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medical items, towels, toilet paper.
Greek:Are there documents?
Major:Yes, of one Indonesian student. From a university in Thompson.
A third conversation is of an unidentified rebel and Cossack commander Nikolay Kozitsin.
Rebel:Regarding the plane shot down in the area of Snizhne-Torez. It’s a civilian one. Fell down near Grabove. There are lots of corpses of women and children. The Cossacks are out there looking at all this.
They say on TV it’s AN-26 transport plane, but they say it’s written Malaysia Airlines on the plane. What was it doing on Ukraine’s territory?
Kozitsin:That means they were carrying spies. They shouldn’t be f*****ng flying here. There is a war going on.
