A Malaysian passenger plane has crashed in eastern Ukraine where government forces are fighting pro-Russian separatists, amid claims the aircraft was shot down.
Malaysia Airlines said there were 295 people on board the plane which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Correspondents at the scene say there was no sign of survivors.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the plane crash was the result of a “terrorist act.”
The separatists denied shooting down the plane and blamed the Ukrainian military.
Poroshenko said the Ukrainian armed forces “did not take any action against any targets” in the area where the plane came down on July 17.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has ordered an investigation.
A Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser, Anton Herashchenko, earlier claimed the plane had been shot down by a BUK ground-to-air missile.
He said the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters when it was hit.
Black Box
The separatists said they did not have weapons that could shoot down aircraft flying at such a high altitude.
The self-styled prime minister of the self-declared “Donetsk People’s Republic,” Aleksandr Borodai, claimed the Ukrainian air force shot down the plane.
The separatists later said they had found the “black box” flight recorder of the downed plane.
Shortly before reports surfaced that a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 had crashed in eastern Ukraine, a social media site purported to belong to a separatist leader claimed that insurgents had shot down an aircraft.
In a post on VKontakte, Russia’s largest social media site, which has since been taken down, separatist leader Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov, wrote that the separatists had downed an AN-26 transport plane used by the Ukrainian Army.
Earlier on June 17, Kyiv accused Russia’s military of shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet, but Russia rejected the claim as “absurd.”
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said on Twitter there’s no confirmation that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 from Amsterdam was shot down.
The Malaysian government said it was launching an immediate investigation.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has offered to help with rescue work at the site of the crash.