UPDATED: Malaysia plane ‘shot’, 295 aboard dead

A Malaysian airliner with 295 people on board has crashed in Ukraine near the border with Russia, after it was shot down by militants.

The plane was on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Ukranian news agency, Interfax, quoted Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukranian interior minister, as saying that the plane was shot down in eastern Ukraine by militants.

Hit by a ground-to-air missile, the plane crashed near Donetsk, which is controlled by pro-Russian rebels.

All 295 people aboard have been confirmed dead.

Malaysia Airlines was first to hint at the tragedy when it wrote on its Twitter timeline: “Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow.”

Gerashchenko also wrote on his Facebook page that the “civilian aircraft was shot down”.

He said it was “flying at an altitude of 10 thousand metres” and that the tragedy “claimed 280 passengers and 15 crew members”.

“Europe, the United States, Canada, the civilized world-open your eyes!” he wrote.

“Help us all than we can! It is a war of good versus evil!”

It is the second time this year that a Malaysian Airlines plane has crashed.

On March 8 2014, a Boeing 777-200 Malaysian Airlines plane conveying 239 people departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 a.m. and was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., a 2,300-mile (3,700km) trip, but it never arrived.

More than four months of intense search for the plane has yielded no result, and the airline’s British commercial chief, Hugh Dunleavy, recently admitted that the search could even last “decades”.

Aboard that flight were 154 Chinese and Taiwanese, 30 Malaysians, five Indians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, three Americans, four French, two New Zealanders, two Ukrainians, two Canadians, and a Russian, Italian, Dutch and Austrian.

Photo source: Reuters