#MH17 BREAKING NEWS: Malaysian Passenger Plane Carrying 295 People 'SHOT DOWN'
Flight MH17, which was carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew, was flying between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpar after taking off leaving at lunchtime today.
The Interfax news agency reported that the aircraft went missing near Donetsk, where pro-Russian rebels have been fighting Ukrainian government forces for several weeks.
TV pictures from the scene showed a pall of smoke billowing into the sky apparently from the stricken aircraft.
It is believed the plane was struck by BUK surface-to-air missile at 33,000ft around 20 miles before entering Russian airspace.
The shoulder-launched Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile can be packed into a golf bag and assembled and fired very rapidly by one person with minimal training.
Defence experts have expressed fears in the past they could be used to target at civil aircraft.
A similar launcher was seen by Associated Press journalists near the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne earlier today.
However, defence analyst Major Charles Heyman, who edited a book called Armed Forces of the European Union, believes it could have been downed by a 'slack' Ukraine air defence centre.
He told Sky News: 'It looks like confusion. It’s possible that Ukraine thought it was hostile and not civilian and shot it down.'
Malaysian Airlines said they have no information about any survivors.
In a tweet, the airline said: 'Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow.'
The crash comes three months after the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which is though to have crashed into the Indian Occean.
Two weeks ago, investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route before eventually plunging into the Indian Ocean.
The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard along a final arc where analysis of satellite data put its last location.
But a month later, officials conceded the wreckage was not in that concentrated area, some 1,000 miles off the northwest coast of Australia, and the search area would have to be expanded.
The next phase of the search is expected to start in August and take a year, covering some 60,000 sq km at a cost of AU$60 million ($56 million) or more. The search is already the most expensive in aviation history.
The new priority search area is around 2,000km west of Perth, a stretch of isolated ocean frequently lashed by storm force winds and massive swells.
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