In these images made from amateur video taken on July 17, 2014 and obtained by The Associated Press, the burning wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is seen near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine
Four months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine, The Associated Press has obtained video that shows how close the burning passenger jet came to hitting village homes and suggests that residents first assumed it was a Ukrainian military plane that had been struck.
The amateur footage, filmed by a resident of Hrabove, shows people reacting in alarm as wreckage blazes only a few meters away from their homes on the afternoon of July 17. The video is perhaps the first taken immediately after the plane came down.
The ultimate cause of the MH17 disaster is the subject of major diplomatic disputes. Ukraine and Western governments say Russia-backed separatist fighters fired the rockets that felled the plane, while state-
run television in Moscow over the weekend produced evidence it claims places blame with Ukraine’s air force.
All 298 people aboard the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed when it was shot down over a rebel-held area. Charred remains of the aircraft are scattered around fields over an area of 20 square kilometers.
Workers yesterday began collecting debris from the crash site, under the supervision of Dutch investigators and officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The recovered fragments will be loaded onto trains and taken to the government-controlled eastern city of Kharkiv. The investigation into what happened to MH17 is being conducted there and in the Netherlands.
The recovery operations have been delayed amid continued fighting between government troops and separatist fighters. A truce was agreed in September, but hostilities have raged on nonetheless.
In the video obtained yesterday by AP, residents of the village of Hrabove can be heard asking about the whereabouts of the pilot. This is significant because multiple Ukrainian military planes had been shot down by this time, and their pilots and crew regularly taken prisoner by rebel forces.
Three days before the MH17 was brought down, rebels claimed responsibility for shooting down an Antonov-24 military transport plane.
The downing of MH17 stunned Ukrainian defense officials. They argued that the aircraft must have been targeted by Russian fighter jets, as it was flying at an altitude of 6,500 meters, far beyond the reach of the Igla portable surface-to-air missiles then being used by rebel fighters. The plane was flying at 10,000 meters when it was hit.
On the day after the Antonov-24 was downed, the Moscow-
based LifeNews television channel broadcast the questioning by rebels of a man identified as the Ukrainian plane’s pilot.
The afternoon that MH17 was brought down, LifeNews reported unnamed rebel sources as saying another Ukrainian transport plane had been downed. Other pro-Kremlin media issued similar reports. They quickly dropped that account as it became evident that a civilian aircraft had in fact been brought down.
The reaction of villagers in the new video suggests their immediate assessment too was that another Ukrainian plane had been struck.
One person can be heard to say: “And where is the pilot?”
Another person answers: “Who the hell knows?”
In another exchange, a person is heard questioning whether more than one plane had crashed, since there was so much debris. People around him quickly correct him to say only one aircraft had come down.
The account favored by most Western government is that the plane was brought down by an SA-11 missile launcher — also known as a Buk —fired by rebels. U.S. government officials have said the Russians might have provided technical help to the rebels to operate the system.
The separatists have denied any involvement in shooting down the plane. Mstyslav Chernov and Peter Lepnard, Hrabove , AP
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