A Malaysian passenger airliner with 295 people on board crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border, Interfax cited an aviation industry source as saying on Thursday.
Malaysia Airlines confirmed on its Twitter that it had lost contact with Flight MH17 that was traveling from Amsterdam, adding that “the last known position was over Ukrainian airspace.”
That flight, according to the aviation tracking website Flightstats.com, was scheduled to arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 6:10 a.m. local time.
Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, said on his Facebook page that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk surface-to-air missile system.
We’ll keep you posted as more events unfold.