Monitors find confusion, hostility at Malaysia Airlines crash site

By Ralph Ellis, Michael Pearson, and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN

July 18, 2014 — Updated 2112 GMT (0512 HKT)

Source: CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

·         NEW: Monitors say they only spent 75 minutes at crash site

·         NEW: Spokesman says "perimeter is not secure"

·         Rebels couldn’t have shot down the jetliner without backing, Obama says

·         U.S. envoy to United Nations says pro-Russia rebels likely fired missile at plane

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Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) - International monitors investigating the Malaysia Airlines crash in eastern Ukraine said Friday the team was not given full access to the site and was greeted with hostility by armed men guarding the scene.

"It basically looks like the biggest crime scene in the world right now, guarded by a bunch of guys in uniform with heavy firepower who are quite inhospitable," Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe team, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

"And there didn’t seem to be anyone really in control, for example. One of our top priorities was to find out what happened to the black boxes. No one was there to answer those questions."

The 21-member OSCE team arrived at the crash site near Torez in a remote section of eastern Ukraine that’s controlled by pro-Russian militants who are battling the Ukraine government. The identity of the armed men at the site was not clear.

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The United States says a surface-to-air missile, possibly fired by the militants, took down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Thursday as the plane traveled from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. All 298 people on board died.

Lack of access worries U.S. officials, including Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who tweeted: "Monitors should be able to access the crash site of MH17. US is deeply concerned by reports that separatists are denying access."

Bociurkiw said the group of monitors only got to stay about 75 minutes on the scene. Missiles could be heard in the distance, which made the monitors uneasy, he said.

Bociurkiw said he doesn’t know of any bodies moved from the site, but warned that the integrity of the scene could be compromised. The crash site is in a difficult-to-access area in the country with no electricity.

"The perimeter is not secure whatsoever," he said. "They seemed to have put some tape up where we were standing. But, otherwise, it’s very easy for anyone, really, to walk in there and tamper with evidence or debris. So a lot of work needs to be done. A lot of professional work, very very quickly."

Noah Sneider, a freelance journalist who visited the site, told CNN that debris was scattered over about 5 acres on a farm field. He reported seeing some victims still in their airliner seats wearing headphones.

"Especially prominent were headphones and tropical shorts, swimsuits, sandals, things people would take to a beach vacation," Sneider said.

The FBI is sending two investigators to work on the case, a U.S. law enforcement official said, but the Ukraine government will be in charge of the investigation.

Obama puts focus on Russia

Russia likely bears some of the responsibility for the apparent downing of Flight 17, President Barack Obama indicated Friday.

In the administration’s strongest words yet on the downing of the jet, which left 298 people dead, Obama said rebel fighters couldn’t have operated the surface-to-air missile believed responsible for the shootdown "without sophisticated equipment and sophisticated training, and that is coming from Russia."

He and other U.S. officials stopped short of publicly placing the responsibility on Russia, which has denied any involvement in the destruction of the jetliner.

But a senior defense official told CNN that the "working theory" among U.S. intelligence analysts is that the Russian military supplied the Buk missile system to rebel fighters inside Ukraine.

U.S.: Can’t rule out Russian involvement

Video shows the moment MH17 crashed

Malaysia Airlines jet crashes in Ukraine

U.S. officials believe the plane was "likely downed by a surface-to-air missile … operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.

In his remarks to reporters, Obama said that he did not want to get ahead of the facts of who may have been directly involved in the airliner’s destruction. But he said the United States would work hard to hold accountable those responsible for it.

At least one American on board

Obama confirmed that at least one U.S. citizen was aboard the plane; Quinn Lucas Schansman was a student at International Business School Hogeschool van Amsterdam, according to his Facebook page. A majority of the passengers (at least 173) were Dutch.

"No one can deny the truth that is revealed in the awful images that we all have seen, and the eyes of the world are on eastern Ukraine, and we are going to make sure that the truth is out," Obama said.

He called for an immediate cease-fire in the region and for a "credible international investigation" into what happened.

His comments echoed earlier statements by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who pointed the finger Friday at pro-Russian rebels.

Power told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the plane was "likely downed by a surface-to-air missile … operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine." If pro-Russian separatists are responsible for shooting down the plane with a missile, investigators can’t rule out the possibility that Russia offered help to operate the system, she said.

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Power also said Russia should take steps to cool tensions in Ukraine.

"Russia can end this war," she said. "Russia must end this war.

MAPS: What route did the flight take?

Evidence

Among the evidence cited by U.S. officials and others for their conclusions was an audio recording released by Ukrainian intelligence officials which purportedly feature pro-Russian rebels and Russian military officers discussing a surface-to-air strike and the crash of a civilian jetliner.

"How are things going there," a man identified as a Russian intelligence agent asks.

"Well, we are 100% sure that it was a civilian plane," a man identified as a pro-Russian fighter responds.

"Are there a lot of people?" the Russian officer asks.

The rebel fighter then utters an obscenity and says, "The debris was falling straight into the yards."

CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of this audio, or other similar recordings.

Also, in a news conference Friday, the chief of Ukraine’s security service, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, said the Buk missile system that shot down the airliner crossed the border from Russia only "right before" the attack. He didn’t say how investigators know that, however

Ukraine’s Interfax news agency reported claims by an adviser to Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Geraschenko that the launcher, as well as the flight data recorders from MH17, were handed over to Russian agents across the border at a checkpoint in the Luhansk area overnight.

A senior Ukrainian official who spoke to CNN also accused Russia of carrying out a cover-up of its role in the shoot-down.

He cited video showing a Buk launcher being moved towards Russia overnight.

CNN could not independently confirm the claims.

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Russia-Ukraine dispute

Tensions have been high between Ukraine and Russia since street protests forced former pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February. Russia subsequently annexed Ukraine’s southeastern Crimea region, and a pro-Russian separatist rebellion has been raging in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

First images of Malaysia Airlines debris

Map: Approximate route of MH17

Wreckage thought to be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 lies in Ukraine on Thursday. This image was posted to Twitter.

Ukraine’s government has accused Russia of allowing weapons and military equipment, including tanks, to cross the border illegally into the hands of pro-Russian rebels.

While Ukrainian officials implicated pro-Russian fighters and their Russian backers for the jetliner’s downing, Moscow argued Ukraine was to blame.

"With regard to the claims raised by Kiev, that it was almost us who did it: In fact I haven’t heard any truthful statements from Kiev over the past few months," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an exclusive interview with the state-run Russia 24 TV channel.

European Union leaders agreed this week to expand sanctions against individuals and entities in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, with details to be decided by the end of the month. Expanded U.S. sanctions were also announced in Washington.

Airspace closed

The Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure announced Friday that the airspace over Donetsk, Luhansk and part of Kharkiv where rebels are operating had been closed indefinitely.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai defended the routing of the Malaysia Airlines plane over the region, saying other carriers were sending their aircraft through the same airspace.

Three months ago, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibited U.S. airlines from flying in areas some way south of where Flight 17 crashed Thursday. Thursday night, the FAA expanded the flight restrictions to all of eastern Ukraine.

Airline’s troubles

Thursday’s crash marks the second time this year that Malaysia Airlines has faced an incident involving a downed plane.

In March, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared with 239 people on board. Searchers have found no trace of the Boeing 777 or its passengers despite extensive search efforts.

Flight 370 probably flew into the southern Indian Ocean on autopilot with an unresponsive crew, Australian authorities said last month. A new underwater search is expected to begin in August.

 

Did surface-to-air missile take down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17?

By Michael Pearson, CNN

updated 6:53 PM EDT, Thu July 17, 2014

 

Separatists recorded admitting fatal error?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

·         NEW: Senior U.S. official: Radar saw surface-to-air missile system track aircraft

·         A sophisticated surface-to-air missile was more likely used, experts say

·         One possibility is the Russian-made Buk missile system, retired Army officer says

·         The sophisticated weapon would require professional soldiers, expert says

(CNN) - What kind of weapon can shoot down a fully loaded passenger jet flying at nearly 33,000 feet?

That could be a key question in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17crash investigation, as officials try to determine what was responsible for Thursday’s plane crash in volatile eastern Ukraine.

A radar system saw a surface-to-air missile system turn on and track an aircraft right before the plane went down, a senior U.S. official told CNN’s Barbara Starr. And a second system saw a heat signature at the time the airliner was hit. The United States is analyzing the trajectory of the missile to pinpoint where the attack came from, the official said.

Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, said in a Facebook post that "terrorists" fired on the plane operating a Buk surface-to-air missile system.

Nationalities aboard MH17 
154 Dutch 
43 Malaysian (including 15 crew) 
27 Australian 
12 Indonesian 
9 British 
4 German 
4 Belgian 
3 Filipino 
1 Canadian 
41 Unverified

Malaysia Airlines jet crashes in Ukraine

This weapon could take down an airliner

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What we know about the MH17 crash

A Ukrainian official also told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Thursday that separatists claimed to have brought down another plane around the same time Flight 17 went missing.

But what could have shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight?

Shoulder-fired missiles sometimes in the arsenals of rebel and separatists groups would be ruled out, experts said.

"At normal cruising altitude a civilian passenger aircraft would be out of the range of the sort of manned portable air (defense) systems that we have seen proliferate in rebel hands in east Ukraine," IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly’s Nick de Larrinaga said in an e-mail.

Such shoulder-mounted weapons at best can reach 15,000 feet, said CNN military analyst Rick Francona, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.

"This would indicate a surface-to-air missile or an air-to-air missile, and I think a surface-to-air missile is probably the best guess right now," he said.

One candidate is the Buk missile system, developed during the Soviet era and operated by Russian and Ukrainian forces.

The missile system, known as the SA-11 among NATO forces, is operated by both Russian and Ukrainian forces, according to retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, director of the Defense and Intelligence Project at theBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

And it’s more than capable of taking down an airliner flying at that altitude, he said.

Such weapons travel with Russian troops at the division level, Francona said.

"So the Russians on the other side of the Ukrainian border will have all of this weaponry available to them," he said.

Other possibilities include Russian-made S-200 missiles that are operated by the Ukrainian military as well as the Russian S-300 and S-400 missiles. The latter weapons are the Russian equivalent of U.S. Patriot missile defense batteries.

What seems unlikely is that pro-Russia separatists might have gained control of such a sophisticated piece of weaponry and used it to shoot down an airliner, Ryan said.

Map: Approximate route of MH17

"It takes a lot of training and a lot of coordination to fire one of these and hit something," he said.

Typically, a surface-to-air battery missile consists of a command post vehicle, a radar vehicle, several self-propelled launchers, loader vehicles and even more vehicles to carry new missiles to the batteries as necessary, according to Dan Wasserbly, Americas editor for IHS Jane’s.

Ryan concludes then that if the plane really was shot down, a professional military force — either on purpose or by accident — was responsible.

"This is not the kind of weapon a couple of guys are going to pull out of a garage and fire," he said.