Missile attack takes down Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine

A pro-Russia militant stands guard at the crash scene on Friday. (Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty)

A day after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, more information has emerged about the flight, how it was shot down and who was on board. But while several details came to light on Friday, there are still key things not known.

Here is what we know and what we don’t know yet.

What we know:

• The flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, a Boeing 777, was shot down using a surface-to-air missile. There were 298 people on the plane, nearly two-thirds of them Dutch citizens.
• President Obama said the rocket appeared to be fired from an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists. He stopped short of directly blaming Russia or saying who fired the missile, but he did say that these separatists had received heavy weaponry and arms from Russia.
• A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment suggested that pro-Russian separatists shot down the plane with an SA-11 missile. Administration officials did not specifically identify the perpetrators, but they made it clear that the rebels are the likeliest suspects.
• The U.S. has gathered significant evidence showing that Ukrainian separatists had trained on Russian territory recently to fire anti-aircraft missiles. (For what it’s worth, the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian rebels continued to blame each other for shooting down the plane.)
• At least one U.S. citizen was on the flight: Quinn Lucas Schansman, 19, who had dual citizenship with the Netherlands. Another Dutch victim, Karlijn Keijzner, had been a rower for Indiana University and was a doctoral student in the school’s chemistry department.
• At least seven people on the plane were heading to an international AIDS conference in Australia.
• Obama called for a “credible” international investigation, echoing calls from other world leaders asking for an international effort. The FBI is sending personnel (including an explosives expert), while the National Transportation Safety Board is sending at least one investigator.
• Ukrainian authorities were in possession of one of the “black box” data recorders, a Ukrainian official said. Pro-Russian rebels said they have block boxes as well, but the Russian foreign minister said Friday that the Russian government would not be taking the boxes in a violation of international rules.

What we don’t know yet:

• If pro-Ukrainian separatists did, in fact, shoot down the jet, the question becomes: Why? They had previously been targeting military aircraft, so shooting down a civilian plane is a big change. (Were they actually trying to shoot down the airliner? Did they know it was actually an airliner? Here’s more on this at the Switch.)
• Details about the people on the plane. Malasyia Air has not released a full passenger manifest, so the names of many of the victims remain unknown, which mean we are only starting to learn about the nearly 300 lives that were cut short in the skies over Ukraine.
• How many people on the plane were heading to the AIDS conference in Australia? Some media reports estimated that more than 100 passengers, or nearly a third of the people on the plane, were heading to the conference. This number drew quite a bit of attention and was repeated by Obama during his remarks Friday. But the figure has not been verified. Organizers confirmed that at least seven people on the flight were heading to the conference, but they said the actual number of delegates and attendees on the plane will likely be much lower than the “more than 100” figure.
• How will the investigation unfold? Access to the site where the plane’s debris is scattered has been tricky, because the plane was shot down in a part of eastern Ukraine that is being fought over by the Ukrainian government and the separatist forces. The Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sent 30 observers to the crash scene, and they had to negotiate access to get to the heavily-guarded site. The international team of investigators is expected late Friday or on Saturday morning, and it’s unclear how the separatists and Ukrainian government will handle allowing experts access to the crash site (to say nothing of what the investigation’s findings will do to the overall fighting in the region).

Here’s the thing: A well-trained radar operator should have been able to distinguish between a civilian airliner and military aircraft.

All aircraft carry transponders — radio equipment that sends out signals about a plane and what it’s doing. Military and civilian transponders use different patterns; the most commonly used modes for commercial flights are known as Mode C and Mode S, the latter of which is also used in a positioning system called ADS-B, a term you might be familiar with from following our coverage of that other Malaysia Airlines flight, MH370.

Meanwhile, military planes use a different identification system whose different modes are numbered rather than lettered. In the military, this system is known as International Friend-or-Foe (IFF); for civilian purposes, it’s called Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR).

A missile platform like the SA-11 Gadfly relies on its operator to know which radar contacts are safe to shoot and which are not; this means the transponder codes are crucial information. Once fired, the SA-11’s missiles hunt down the target with a 95 percent interception rate, no matter who’s on the receiving end. The more advanced SA-17 Grizzly can apparently determine when it’s latched onto a civilian transponder code, but that won’t stop the operator from taking the shot.

How likely is it that the missile operators knew that a commercial airliner was their target? Read more here.

– Brian Fung

Keijzer, a doctoral student in the chemistry department in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, was among the passengers on Malaysia Air Flight 17, which crashed Thursday. (Courtesy: Mike Dickbernd)

In Indiana University’s classrooms, Karlijn Keijzer was known as an intellectual doctoral chemistry student from the Netherlands, who spent long days testing anti-cancer and Alzheimer’s drugs. In campus sports, she was a feisty and formidable athlete who spent long mornings on the rowing team.

But she will always be remembered by her friends for one long festive night when she showed up to a costume party dressed as a giant piece of corn.

The 25-year-old student — who was back in the Netherlands just for the summer and planned to return to Bloomington in the fall — was killed along with the 297 other passengers when their Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over Ukraine.

Keijzer’s boyfriend was also on the plane: Laurens van der Graaff. He was a 29-year-old teacher. Friends said they’d been dating just a year and were madly in love. Photographs online and on Facebook show a young, good-looking couple laughing together, arms around one another, blue eyes glowing.

More here.

– Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

What is it like to fly a day after a commercial airliner was shot out of the sky? Joel Achenbach, writing on a plane heading from Washington to Texas, reports that it feels a little more dangerous.

A nonprofit Ukrainian-American human rights group says it will hold a vigil Friday night in Washington.

Victoria St. Martin reports that the group Razom is planning to meet at 6 p.m. in front of the Dutch Embassy, located at 4200 Linnean Ave NW. Those gathered will then walk in silence to the Malaysian Embassy, according to a news release.

Another vigil is planned for Friday night in Philadelphia.

Read more about the vigil here.

The uncle of three Australian siblings who were returning from a family vacation on the downed Malaysia Airlines fight remembered the children as active and bright, calling them “amazing kids,” Australian media reported.

Twelve-year-old Mo, 10-year-old Evie and 8-year-old Otis Maslin were killed in Thursday’s crash, along with their grandfather, Nick Norris, according to reports. The deaths were confirmed in a statement from the South Perth Yacht Club, where the 68-year-old Norris was a member.

“They were the most incredible kids, well beyond their years in many aspects,” their uncle, Brack Norris told the Herald Sun. “We will miss them all so terribly.”

The children’s parents weren’t on the flight and heard about the crash in Amsterdam, the South of Perth Yacht Club told the Wall Street Journal.

Their aunt, Natalia Gemmell, called the trio “gentle, clever, beautiful kids,” and told the Herald Sun that she spoke with her father before the plane took off.

“In my mind he was a very great man; he has been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves; he’s been a headmaster; he’s been a consultant with Indigenous people with education and he has done his bit to change his part of the world,” Gemmell said. “I spoke to him just before he caught the plane to find out when he was leaving and told him I loved him and told him I’d see him when he got back.”

A relative of passengers on flight MH17 wipes his eyes as he waits in a bus to be transported to an unknown location to receive more information, at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Thursday. (AP Photo/Phil Nijhuis)

The only confirmed U.S. citizen on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur to meet his family for a vacation, according to a friend. Quinn Lucas Schansman, 19, had dual citizenship with the Netherlands and had been educated in Amsterdam.

Schansman “stuck up for you and made you laugh when he saw there was something wrong,” according to Fabienne Schriek, a former classmate from his high school, Alberdingk Thijm College in Hilversum. He also was a peacemaker, Schriek said via a Facebook conversation. “If there was a fight in class he could cool everyone down again, made a joke and it was like it never happened. He was really down to earth and just fun guy to have around.” Schriek had just spoken to him last month.

Schansman liked soccer. He posted frequently on Instagram, smiling selfies and casual photos with his arms around friends. In a final picture, uploaded last week, two people sprawled on an outdoor trampoline. He hashtagged the event “just chillin in the garden feelin like a duck.”

Hours after Flight 17 was shot down in Ukraine, Schansman’s girlfriend, Floor van Dranen, had changed her Facebook cover photograph to depict the two of them embracing, prompting friends to leave pictures of hearts and tears, and grief stricken messages in Dutch.

More from Monica Hesse and Mary Pat Flaherty here.

The United States has gathered a significant body of evidence that Ukrainian separatists have been trained on Russian territory in recent weeks to fire anti-aircraft missiles, according to American military and intelligence officials who have raised alarms over the reports.

Among other weapons, U.S. officials said the separatists have been trained in using mobile anti-aircraft batteries — missile systems that could be moved around on vehicles and are suspected of having been used in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet on Thursday.

Craig Whitlock has more here, including details on the missile battery officials believe was used to shoot down the jet.

Denis Pushilin addressed a rally in Donetsk on May 28. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

As international attention focused on pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, one of the leading rebel figures stepped down, leaving Ukraine for Russia, Interfax reported.

Denis Pushilin, a pro-Russian rebel who had taken on the title of Chairman of the Supreme Council of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, was one of the more vocal and visible figures in the separatist movement.

“Denis is now in Moscow. He sent a letter addressed to me with a request for resignation from his post at his own request,” Pushilin’s deputy, Vladimir Makovich, told the news service Interfax. Makovich said the Donetsk rebels had voted to accept their leader’s resignation.

Pushilin maintained a steady opposition to the Ukrainian government. But when Ukrainian troops began wresting control away from the pro-Russian separatists in the east, he also expressed public disappointment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had encouraged the separatists but did not come to their aid when the Ukrainian military began making gains.

The rebel leader quickly backpedaled from those comments and has since spoken highly of Russia, tweeting earlier this week: “Russia is the only country taking care of the fate of Ukrainian people.”

Pushilin is wanted by Ukrainian law enforcement; it’s not clear how he was able to leave the country, though Ukraine doesn’t control its full border with Russia.

— Karoun Demirjian in Moscow

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.(EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV)

As Ukraine and Russia traded barbs over who was responsible for shooting down the Malaysian aircraft, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated an earlier warning that Russia could answer what it perceives as aggression from Ukraine with targeted strikes, during part of an interview with television station Russia 24 recorded by state-owned newswire RIA Novosti.

“We have already warned that if this continues, we will take the necessary measures,” Lavrov said, referring to shelling on the Russian side of the border that killed one civilian last weekend — Russia blamed the incident on the Ukrainian military. “At least, if it is understood that this is done intentionally, I am convinced that we need to pointedly suppress them in a one-time way.”

“According to our estimates, it’s still either the result of not very professional work of those who serve on these installations, or just a coincidence that happens in the time of war,” Lavrov said. “But we have seriously warned our Ukrainian colleagues.”

 – Karoun Demirjian in Moscow

At least some of the people killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were AIDS researchers and activists heading to a conference in Australia. That much is confirmed. Beyond that, much is unknown.

News reports have estimated that more than 100 people on the plane — nearly a third of the 298 passengers killed in the crash — were heading to the conference, a number cited by President Obama during remarks on Friday. But conference organizers said that they had only been able to confirm the names of seven people so far, cautioning that the number of people on the plane heading to the conference may be lower than the figures that have been reported. (About 14,000 people are expected at the conference.)

“We have been working hard to try and confirm how many people were on the flight,” Chris Beyrer, who will take over the presidency of the International AIDS Society next week, told The Washington Post. “We’ve been speaking to a number of different authorities, and we think the actual number is much smaller.”

President Obama, speaking at the White House, called the deaths of nearly 300 people an “outrage of unspeakable proportions.” He highlighted the passengers heading to the AIDS conference during his remarks, praising these passengers as people focused on helping others.

“On board Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-17 there were apparently near 100 researchers and advocates traveling to an international conference in Australia dedicated to combating AIDS/HIV,” he said. “These were men and women who had dedicated their own lives to saving the lives of others, and they were taken from us in a senseless act of violence.”

When asked where President Obama got the “near 100 researchers and advocates” figure, the National Security Council told The Washington Post that the figure was used in remarks by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

But The Post has been unable to locate any remarks where Abbott specifically cited this figure. In addition, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop does not appear to have used the number directly, instead saying only that “a number of people” heading to the conference were on the plane. (We will update this post if we find any remarks where Abbott or Bishop cited the figure.)

Victoria Premier Denis Napthine told reporters in Melbourne that the exact number is unknown, but said “there is no doubt it’s a substantial number.”

The “nearly 100 delegates” figure appears to have originated from delegates at a pre-conference in Sydney. It has not been confirmed or debunked, in large part because the identities of most of the passengers remains unknown.

An official passenger manifest has not been released, slowing the process of identifying who was on the plane. (Malaysia Air said on Friday that it still had not determined the nationalities of four passengers.) So the AIDS conference organizers are relying on information from a variety of sources, including colleagues, friends, family members and government authorities.

Beyrer told The Washington Post that while it is possible some people were on the flight and heading to the conference that organizers did not know about, it does seem the number is “an order of magnitude smaller than what has been reported.”

Caelainn Hogan, Ariana Eunjung Cha and Joel Achenbach contributed to this report.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R.-Ill.) says he will petition the Federal Aviation Administration to install missile defense systems on commercial airliners.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). (M. Spencer Green/AP)

“I think they should actively look into mounting active defenses on civil aircraft that are carrying hundreds of people,” Kirk, a former Navy intelligence officer, told The Post. “It’s not too technically difficult to add a radar warning system on an aircraft, where a pilot in command could dispense chaff to defeat a radar guided missile.”

Kirk said he would write to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta to propose defense systems, adding that the overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi and the collapse of the Iraqi army had allowed large stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles to fall into uncertain hands.

“At this point we can’t just hide. We should think about how to defeat this threat technically,” Kirk said. “We should advise passengers whether an aircraft has active defenses or not and let them make the decision as they’re booking. I think that would really restore a lot of confidence in the system.”

Kirk said that identification of the missile that brought down MH17 as a Buk SA-11 suggested that active duty Russian military had a hand in the act.

​”The Buk missile system is such a complicated radar-guided system. I would think a bunch of Ukrainian hillbillies would not have an ability to operate it efficiently. You would have to have the back up of the active duty Russian military to properly deploy and use the Buk.”

— Ashley Halsey III

The first OSCE team is also here pic.twitter.com/LKPGcLwu0H

— Daniel Sandford (@BBCDanielS) July 18, 2014

Despite earlier reports, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which sent a group of 30 observers to the crash scene on Friday, were not shot at by separatists guarding the crash site.

According to a spokesman for the organization who spoke to the observers on the ground in Donetsk, they arrived at the field to find it heavily guarded, but have been successfully negotiating with separatist forces for access to the site. The Donetsk separatists told Interfax earlier on Friday they were guarding the area with 600 men.

“They were guarding the site, and it was quite heavily guarded, and basically at some point during the assessment, the guards fired shots into the air, but the shots were not targeting the monitors as such, they were just into the air,” according to Shiv Sharma, a spokesman for the OSCE in Vienna. “It was not a particularly tense situation in which monitors were concerned about their security.”

“I don’t think it was particularly any kind of act of aggression,” she said.

The monitors were given access to the site for 75 minutes and are negotiating on a day-to-day basis for time at the site.

Their job is to secure the crash site until independent investigators arrive and assist with the transfer of bodies.

– Karoun Demirjian

President Obama called the deaths of 298 passengers aboard a Malaysia Airlines jet that was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile over Eastern Ukraine an “outrage of unspeakable proportions.” While investigators have not yet determined exactly what happened, it appears as though the missile was fired from an area of Ukraine controlled by Russian separatists, he said.

While he cautioned that not all of the facts are known and did not blame anyone for shooting down the plane, Obama had strong words for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he said could stop the violence in the region.

Head to Post Politics for more.

(Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

As the investigation into the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight 17 jet continues, now with the assistance of the U.S., investigators will be dealing with a massive debris field that includes not only the wheat field where a majority of the plane was found, but also residential homes in villages nearby.

Everything, from bodies to luggage and equipment, has been found in gardens and inside the homes of people nearby, leaving residents shaken and largely helpless as they wait for the authorities to collect the remains, according to Reuters:

One of the corpses fell through the rickety roof of Irina Tipunova’s house in this sleepy village, just after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 exploded high over eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting government forces.

“There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle. Then objects started falling out of the sky,” the 65-year-old pensioner said in front of her grey-brick home.

“And then I heard a roar and she landed in the kitchen, the roof was broken,” she said, showing the gaping hole made by the body when it came through the ceiling of the kitchen in an extension to the house.

The dead woman’s naked body was still lying inside the house, next to a bed.

About 100 meters (330 feet) from Tipunova’s home, dozens more dead bodies lay in the wheat fields where the airliner came down on Thursday, killing all 298 people on board.

Off-duty coal miners have taken on the somber task of trudging through sunflowers fields to help locate debris and human remains.

(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

A piece of a plane with the sign “Malaysia Airlines” lies in the grass as a group of Ukrainian coal miners search the site of a crashed Malaysian passenger plane near the village of Rozsypne, Ukraine, eastern Ukraine Friday, July 18, 2014. Rescue workers, policemen and even off-duty coal miners were combing a sprawling area in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border where the Malaysian plane ended up in burning pieces Thursday, killing all 298 aboard. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

(Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

Flowers outside Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. (AP Photo/Phil Nijhuis)

AMSTERDAM – The airport kiosks were selling newspapers plastered with news of the crash. Travelers rushed by, hustling to make their Friday flights. Murphy’s Irish Pub still offered its nachos-and-Heineken special, not far from a vendor selling orange soccer jerseys of the Dutch national team.

Just after noon, another Malaysia Airlines plane departed this airport bound for Kuala Lumpur. It was Flight 17, which the airline was still operating a day after MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine.

At Schiphol Airport, there were few outward signs of the air disaster that killed 298 people. This is, after all, the world’s 14th-busiest airport, and people still had places to go. Freight still needed to be moved.

One of the few places where pain and loss were on display was outside the glass walls of Terminal 3. Bouquets lay on the sidewalk, roped off and watched over by an airport worker.

Herman Plukaard stopped to drop off a collection of small white flowers he’d bought at the flower shop on the floor below. Plukaard works at the airport, near the Malaysia Airlines desk. He probably conducted business with passengers on Thursday’s Flight 17.

“It is madness what’s happening,” he said. “No one can imagine this happening.”

Inge Dekker dropped off a bouquet of tulips after arriving in her home country from London. She didn’t know anyone on the flight, but she had friends who did. She was struck by how many Dutch were onboard the plane.

“Everybody is just in shock,” she said.

— Todd C. Frankel

Two Newcastle United fans traveling to watch the team play in New Zealand were among the victims of the Malaysia Airlines crash, the team confirmed Friday.

Newcastle United called John Alder and Liam Sweeney “two of the Club’s most loyal supporters.” Alder and Sweeney were headed to the Football United Tour, scheduled to take place next week in Dunedin and Wellington, the club said.

“John was a lifelong supporter and a familiar sight in the stands for almost half-a-century, having barely missed a single game in that time,” the club said in a statement. “Liam will be known to many fans during his time volunteering as a steward on supporters’ buses to away games.”

We are deeply saddened to learn that two members of the #NUFC family lost their lives on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 yesterday.

— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) July 18, 2014

We’re creating a tribute page on http://t.co/6wuhjLaac5 to John Alder and Liam Sweeney. Please email tributes to anthony.marshall@nufc.co.uk

— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) July 18, 2014

Tributes to Newcastle fans killed on #MH17 left outside club’s Bobby Robson statue http://t.co/WhS4Yh6Ljl #nufc pic.twitter.com/xJL8rdO8Al

— ITV News (@itvnews) July 18, 2014

Players and manager Alan Pardew will wear black armbands in New Zealand, and Newcastle United will pay tribute to the pair in August, according to the statement.

Some players were also tweeting about the crash Friday.

2 Geordies on plane MH17 travelling to watch Nufc in New Zealand. RIP John Adler and Liam Sweeney.. Our thoughts are with all the families!

— Tim Krul (@TimKrul) July 18, 2014

R.I.P to all involved in flight MH17 crash. Especially the 2 NUFC fans. Thoughts with families of John Alder and Liam Sweeney

— Paul Dummett (@PaulDummett) July 18, 2014

A short video posted to YouTube by the Ukrainian government reportedly shows a “Buk,” or SA-11 “Gadfly,” surface-to-air missile system en route from eastern Ukraine to the Russian border on Friday.

While the video cannot be independently verified, the footage appears to show the system with at least one of its missiles missing. It also seems to be mounted on a tracked chassis, although it has been loaded onto a flatbed trailer. Tracked vehicles are decidedly slower than their wheeled counterparts. The use of the truck could indicate the system’s own propulsion system is disabled, or that speed is a priority for whomever is moving it.

U.S. officials asserted Friday that the Malaysian airliner that crashed in Ukraine was likely downed by an SA-11 operated from a separatist-held location.

More from Thomas Gibbons-Neff here.

President Obama called the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane “a global tragedy,” calling for an international investigation to determine what happened.

Obama, speaking at the White House on Friday morning, said that at least one U.S. citizen was killed in the crash. But he pointed to the facts of Flight 17’s destruction — an Asian airliner carrying nearly 300 people from several countries, shot down over Europe — as evidence of why this requires an international effort.

“Their deaths are an outrage of unspeakable proportions,” Obama said.

Obama called for a “credible” international investigation, one that would allow investigators access to the crash site and require a cease-fire in the region.

The “outrageous event” serves as a reminder that peace is needed in the contested Ukrainian region, he said.

Obama also echoed what other U.S. officials had previously reported, saying that the plane was taken down by a surface-to-air missile fired from a Ukrainian area controlled by Russian-backed separatists. He also said that the separatists had received heavy weaponry and training from Russia, something the White House also said he noted to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a phone call on Thursday.

“Violence and conflict inevitably lead to unforeseen consequences,” Obama said. “Russia, these separatists, and Ukraine all have the capacity to put an end to the fighting.”

Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, did not directly address the charge of separatist responsibility and complicity by Moscow for the missile attack.

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Agreeing that an international investigation is needed, Churkin criticized those who are “trying to prejudge the outcome with broad statements and insinuations” and accused the Ukrainian government of failing to warn aircraft to avoid the conflict area in eastern Ukraine.

Brian Flynn, a spokesman for Eurocontrol, said earlier that Ukrainian aviation authorities had closed the airspace below 32,000 feet on Monday after having earlier restricted the airspace below 26,000 feet. In both cases, the closures came as a result of security concerns after rebels shot down Ukrainian military aircraft.

Flynn said it is up to the Ukrainian government to decide whether and how to restrict airspace, with Eurocontrol responsible for helping to implement those decisions.

“For any normal person,” Churkin said Friday at the United Nations, “the question would arise: Why did Ukrainian aviation dispatchers send [the Malaysian flight] to an area of strife, where there were anti-aircraft systems in operation?”

By continuing its military offensive to dislodge the separatists, Churkin said, Ukraine “chose the wrong path, and their Western colleagues supported them. I’m talking about the United States; they actually pushed them to escalate.” Now, he said, “they are trying to lay the blame on Russia.”

— Karen DeYoung

Griff Witte contributed to this report.

It’s apples and oranges, but U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is comparing the scale of the MH17 tragedy for the Netherlands to 9/11 and the United States.

Scale of #MH17 disaster is horrific for people of Netherlands: Number of victims relative to total population is same as 9/11 for U.S.

— Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) July 18, 2014

Speaking to the U.N. Security Council, Power said the plane “was likely downed by an SA-11 missile, operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine.” Because of the “technical complexity” of the SA-11, she said: “We cannot rule out Russian technical assistance.”

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power speaks at the U.N. Security Council meeting. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

In a statement from the Security Council, its members “expressed their deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims, and to the people and Governments of all those killed in the crash in Eastern Ukraine on 17 July of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

“The members of the Security Council called for a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the incident in accordance with the international civil aviation guidelines and for appropriate accountability.

“The members of the Security Council further stressed the need for all parties to grant immediate access by investigators to the crash site to determine the cause of the incident.”

Members of the international HIV research community were in a state of shock after the death of world-renowned scientist Joep Lange and at least several other activists who perished when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down Thursday over eastern Ukraine.

Some news reports estimated that the number of people on board the flight who were en route to the 2014 International Aids Conference in Melbourne, which is scheduled to begin this weekend, was as high as 100 or one third of the 298 people on board. But as of midnight Australia time on Friday, conference organizers said they had only been able to confirm seven names.

More here.

– Caelainn Hogan and Ariana Cha 

Indiana University says a former member of its rowing team was killed in Thursday’s Malaysia Airlines crash.

Karlijn Keijzer, 25, was a doctoral student at IU, the university said in a statement Friday, and part of Indiana’s rowing team in the 2011 season.

“On behalf of the entire Indiana University community, I want to express my deepest sympathies to Karlijn’s family and friends over her tragic death,” university president Michael McRobbie said in the statement. “Karlijn was an outstanding student and a talented athlete, and her passing is a loss to the campus and the university. Our hearts also go out to the families of all the victims of this senseless act.”

Indiana University Athletics Mourns the Loss of Former Rower Karlijn Keijzer http://t.co/S2XJ8zfKZm pic.twitter.com/j659xbbBqL

— Indiana Athletics (@OurIndiana) July 18, 2014

“The Indiana Rowing family is deeply saddened by the news of Karlijn’s sudden passing,” Indiana rowing coach Steve Peterson said in the statement. “She came to us for one year as a graduate student and truly wanted to pursue rowing. That year was the first year we really started to make a mark with the First Varsity 8 boat and she was a huge reason for it. She was a phenomenal student and loved IU so much that she stayed here after she earned her master’s degree. Our condolences go out to her family and friends in this very tough time.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that it would send at least one investigator to Ukraine to help investigate the downed jet.

It’s unclear when the investigator will be sent, the NTSB said, and the agency’s response will be determined by events as they unfold.

The FBI is also sending personnel to assist with the NTSB investigation, an official said Friday.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power speaks at the U.N. Security Council meeting. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Speaking to the U.N. Security Council, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 “was likely downed by an SA-11 missile, operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine.”

Because of the “technical complexity” of the SA-11, she said: “We cannot rule out Russian technical assistance.”

The incident, she said, was “fueled by Russian support for separatists.”

Power said the tragedy “only underscores the urgency and determination with which we insist that Russia take concrete steps to deescalate the situation in Ukraine.”

“This war can be ended. Russia can end this war. Russia must end this war.”

— Karen De Young

The pro-Russian rebels are ready to move bodies of the victims of the Malaysian airline crash to a laboratory in Kharkiv, Interfax quoted Alexander Borodai, a leader among the separatists in Donetsk, as saying, because they “do not have sufficient refrigerators to store the victims’ bodies.”

Thus far, the official Ukrainian emergency agency working in Donetsk has discovered 182 bodies, according to Interfax. There were a total of 298 people on board the Malaysian Airlines flight.

– Karoun Demirjian reporting from Moscow

A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment indicates that the Malaysia Airlines jet was blown up by a missile fired by pro-Russian separatists, a U.S. official said Friday.

The attack was very likely carried out using an SA-11 surface-to-air missile system, or a similar class of weapon, according to the assessment.The official cautioned that the assessment is not final – and that U.S. analysts were still investigating.

— Craig Whitlock

The FBI is spending personnel, including one with expertise in explosives, to assist with the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, a U.S. official said.

– Adam Goldman

Some of the victims from Thursday’s crash reportedly included passengers on their way to an AIDS conference, including researcher Joep Lange. Joel Achenbach and Ariana Cha report:

Lange, a Dutch citizen, had been a pioneer in the field since the early days of the AIDS epidemic and had worked tirelessly, his friends and colleagues said, to improve access to life-saving drugs in impoverished corners of the globe.

“His loss casts a pall over the International AIDS Conference just getting underway in Melbourne,” wrote Daniel R. Kuritzkes, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He called Lange “an extraordinary leader, scientist and humanitarian” who, as a past president of the International AIDS Society and as a leading Dutch academic researcher, “fought ceaselessly for the dignity of all HIV-infected persons throughout the world.”

Read more here.

The White House announced that President Obama will address the situation in Ukraine at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, from the White House press briefing room.

We will live stream his remarks here.

Ukrainian authorities were in possession of one “black box” data recorder from the downed plane on Friday, said Konstantin Batozsky, an adviser to the Donetsk regional governor, Serhiy Taruta. Batozsky said he didn’t have exact information about where the recorder had been recovered.

Rebels had told Ukrainian authorities that they had at least one other data recorder, Batozsky said, but government officials had not actually seen the second recorder.

Passenger planes normally carry two recorders: One records the data from instruments; the other is the cockpit voice recorder.

In an interview with Russia 24 television Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia would not be taking the black boxes pro-Russian rebels said they had recovered from the plane, despite the separatists’ offer to hand them over.

“We are not going to take away these boxes, we are not going to violate the rules existing with regard to this sort of cases within the international community,” he said.

Lavrov also said that the international community could not expect Russia to get the rebels in eastern Ukraine to lay down their arms.

“It’s impossible to demand only of use to make the militiamen essentially accept the fact that they will either finish it off, or surrender at the mercy of the victor,” Lavrov said, according to Interfax.

Lavrov criticized Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for potentially poisoning the investigation of the plane crash, Lavrov charged, by calling for a commission to look into the incident while also declaring that the crash was an act of terrorism.

“Of course, attempts to claim that this was a terrorist act, so the Ukrainian researchers will be guided by this in their work – this is unacceptable, this pressure on the acts of the this commission,” Lavrov said.

— Michael Birnbaum and Karoun Demirjian

Pakistan International Airlines is used to flying over conflict zones.

Last month, a dozen heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed airport grounds in Karachi, killing more than two dozen people, damaging several planes and setting a huge fire that burned for hours.

Two weeks later, on June 24, militants also fired a volley of high-caliber bullets at a Pakistan International Airlines plane as it was landing in Peshawar Pakistan.

Several bullets penetrated the fuselage, killing a passenger and wounding two flight attendants. The plane would have likely crashed and killed all 198 people on board had one of the bullets struck the pilot or the fuel tank, officials said.

Yet despite those threats, PIA continues to fly 30 flights a day over Pakistani airspace. It also has several flights each week to Kabul, traversing over areas effectively controlled by the Afghan Taliban. But there is one country that PIA stopped flying over two months ago due to danger: Ukraine.

“We were proceeding as if there could be some problem, so we started finding safer routes,” said Mashhood Tajwar, a PIA spokesman. “Issues were bubbling up, and we had some alternatives available, so we thought it would be better to keep our system free of any trouble in the future.”

The fact that an airline that operates in such a violence-prone environments as PIA decided to avoid Ukrainian airspace could raise questions about why Malaysian Airways officials did not reach a similar conclusion.

Tajwar said the decision to avoid Ukrainian was made due to the “dispute over airspace” in Crimea between Russia and Ukraine.

Instead of taking a chance of getting caught up in the conflict, Tajwar said PIA began taking a northern route toward Moscow or a southern route over Turkey for flights bound for Europe or New York. PIA has about 30 flights each week to the United Kingdom, eight to other European cities and two to New York.

“We made the decision even though it costs us more money and it adds 10 to 15 minutes to the flight,” said Tajwar, adding the airline has been scrutinizing flight paths since Malaysian Airways Flight 370 went missing in March. “There was no specific threat, but our flight operations center was continually monitoring the situation and devised a new flight path.”

As to how PIA came to view a flight path over Ukraine as more dangerous than flights over Pakistan or Afghanistan, Tajwar said the calculation was simple.

In Pakistan, he said, the airline is continually doing “risk assessments” and is confident that Pakistan’s military can keep its airspace free of danger. In Afghanistan, Tajwar noted that the U.S. military continues to play a leading role in air traffic control and threat mitigation.

“The Kabul flight route is actually quit safe,” Tajwar said.

— Tim Craig

Related: Planes are now avoiding Ukrainian airspace

Relatives of Flight 370 passengers — still recovering from the frustration and chaos of the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared four months ago — are offering advice for the newly grieving relatives of passengers aboard Flight 17.

Never stop demanding answers even when authorities dodge questions, they say. Work together when dealing with the government, the media and lawyers. And most of all, according to some, don’t expect answers from Malaysia Airlines anytime soon.

“Don’t count on Malaysia airlines for any first-hand information,” read one relative’s post on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Writing under the online handle Chubeichu2, the relative said: “Your main sources should be the internet and the media … official information will always be the last one to come.”

More than 153 of the 239 people aboard March’s missing flight were Chinese. Since MH370 disappeared from radar on March 8, passengers’ family members have gone through cycles of despair, anger and hope — only to had those hopes dashed. Search efforts have continued, but have yielded little to explain what happened and where the plane ended up.

For some, Thursday’s news was yet another flash of hope. Many saw the name “Malaysia Airlines” on the news, and thought Flight 370 may have finally been found.

“In the past few months, I thought we had already got back to a normal life. Not as normal as before, but at least my aunt didn’t cry anymore,” said one man in Beijing, whose cousin was Flight 370.

The man asked to be identified only by his surname, Chi, saying he was tired of calls from reporters and lawyers, and that he feared it could affect his family’s dealings with authorities.

Chi said his aunt, like many family members, continues to make regular trips to the Malaysia Airlines’ office in Beijing for updates. She has refused the $50,000 compensation offered by Malaysia Airlines because she didn’t want to sign the agreement officially declaring her son dead.

Chi and others in his family have been approached by the Chinese authorities offering free legal assistance and trying to persuade them to take the money. Several American lawyers have called as well. “We don’t trust any of them,” Chi said.

Other relatives, under a collective Weibo account formed by Chinese families of MH370 passengers, urged families of the newly downed Flight 17 to stay strong amid the international wrangling that is expected in the coming days.

Noting the confusing and uncoordinated search between authorities when Flight 370 disappeared four months ago, the families wrote in their post: “There is a lot of different and confusing information about MH17; it’s as if the tragedy of MH370 is happening all over again. We hope relevant countries could work together instead of undermining each other; we hope there would be consistent instead of contradicting information.”

“One accident after another. we have to ask, where is the flight safety? Will every plane ride become scary like a roller-coaster?” read the online post.

“What’s wrong with you Malaysia. We are hoping this is not true. We don’t want anyone to suffer like us,” wrote the families, in another post.

Many relatives — who worry attention and pressure to find Flight 370 have flagged — also expressed hope that Thursday’s tragedy might bring fresh attention to their still-missing relatives.

“No matter if others care or not, we won’t give it up. They are my relatives,” Chi said.

— William Wan

Xu Yangjingjing and Xu Jing in Beijing contributed to this report.

Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine are offering a truce to allow authorities to investigate the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines jet, which U.S. officials said was taken down in a surface-to-air missile attack Thursday. Nearly 300 people aboard the Boeing 777 were killed, the airline said. Here’s what we know so far, and what we’re looking at as the day develops.

What we know so far: 

• Flight 17 was carrying 298 passengers, a total that included three infants, Malaysia Airlines said Thursday.

• Among the victims was a 77-year-old nun from Australia.

• The Associated Press reported that an Australian woman whose stepdaughter was aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 also lost a brother in Flight 370, which disappeared in March.

• Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the downed plane an “act of terrorism.” “War has gone beyond the territory of Ukraine,” Poroshenko said Friday. “Consequences of this war have already reached the whole world.”

• The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting Friday.

• Ukraine’s Security Service on Thursday released a recording of what it said were intercepted phone calls between separatists and Russian military intelligence officer. The recording, which is posted below, contained discussions about shooting down a plane. The Washington Post couldn’t independently verify the recording or any of the people heard speaking on it, but three Russian language speakers working for The Post verified the translation that we’ve reported.

What we don’t know so far:

• Many of the passengers were traveling to the AIDS conference in Australia, it is still unknown how many were on flight MH17.

• Were any U.S. citizens on the plane? That is unclear right now. Malaysia airlines updated their list of nationalities on board, but four victims remain unverified. Obama said the United States is working to see if any of citizens were on the plane.

• What will this mean for the conflict in the region? Ukraine insists that there was Russian involvement in shooting down the plane, if in fact this is true, it may only further inflame the fighting in the tense region.

• Flight crash investigations are painstaking and technical affairs. But evidence at the MH17 crash site may have been compromised from the very beginning. Will investigators be able to recover crucial data from the plane’s black boxes? And what information has already been lost?

A 77-year-old nun was among the victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight, an Australian school confirmed in a news release Friday.

Sister Philomene Tiernan worked at Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart in Sydney, which said she was one of more than 20 Australians aboard the plane.

“We are devastated by the loss of such a wonderfully kind, wise and compassionate woman, who was greatly loved by us all,” the school’s principal, Hilary Johnston-Croke said in a statement. “Phil contributed greatly to our community and she touched the lives of all of us in a very positive and meaningful way.”

Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull on Friday tweeted about Tiernan, who had been associated with the school for more than 30 years.

Many women incl my wife Lucy & daughter Daisy were inspired by the love of Sr Phil Tiernan RSCJ. God bless her & all who died in MH17.

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) July 18, 2014

@TurnbullMalcolm Sr Tiernan taught me at Kincoppal in 70’s, a wonderful, loving, intelligent + inspiring woman, touching al at Sacre Coeur. — Kuvlotik (@Kuvlotik) July 18, 2014

From the Associated Press: In an almost incomprehensible twist of fate, an Australian woman who lost her brother in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 learned Friday that her stepdaughter was on the plane shot down over Ukraine.

Kaylene Mann’s brother Rod Burrows and sister-in-law Mary Burrows were on board Flight 370 when it vanished in March. That flight is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean.

On Friday, Mann found out that her stepdaughter, Maree Rizk, was killed along with 297 others on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which U.S. intelligence authorities believe was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

“It’s just brought everyone, everything back,” said Greg Burrows, Mann’s brother. “It’s just … ripped our guts again.”

Read full story

Reports that perhaps as many as 100 HIV researchers were on board the downed flight heading to a conference in Australia have shaken the entire profession. Among them was one of the most renowned, Joep Lange.

See full stories here and here.

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An adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister said that an anti-aircraft missile downed the Boeing 777, which was carrying 295 people, over the village of Torez, about 25 miles east of the city of Donetsk and within territory held by pro-Russian separatist rebels. This video shows black smoke rising and debris falling from the sky at the crash site.