Burning wreckage, bodies scattered after airliner crashes in Ukraine

Dozens of bodies
were scattered around the smouldering wreckage
of a passenger jet that crashed in a field in
eastern Ukraine on Thursday, a Reuters reporter
said.
An emergency services rescue worker said at
least 100 bodies had so far been found at the
scene, near the village of Grabovo, and that
debris from the wreckage was spread across an
area up to about 15 km (nine miles) in diameter.

Broken pieces of the wings were marked with
blue and red paint - the same colours as the
emblem of the Malaysian airline which lost track
of a Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur that was carrying almost 300
people.

"I was working in the field on my tractor when I
heard the sound of a plane and then a bang and
shots. Then I saw the plane hit the ground and
break in two. There was thick black smoke," said
a witness, who gave his name only as Vladimir.

A separatist rebel from nearby Krasnyi Luch who
gave his name only as Sergei said: "From my
balcony I saw a plane begin to descend from a
great height and then heard two explosions.

He denied the rebels had shot the plane down.
"This could happen only if it was a fighter jet or a
surface-to-air missile (that shot it down)," he
told Reuters, saying the rebels did not have
weapons capable of shooting shoot down a plane
at such a height.

All 295 people aboard the plane were killed, a
Ukrainian interior ministry official said, blaming
"terrorists" using a ground-to-air missile.
Ukraine's prime minister called the downing of
the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur a
"catastrophe".
(Reporting by Anton Zverev;