Australia yesterday said it was “sickened” after new footage emerged allegedly of Russian-backed rebels ransacking the luggage of passengers killed after Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, as a ceremony marked the disaster’s one-year anniversary.
The video was obtained by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and published exactly a year after the Malaysia Airlines plane was blown out of the sky during a routine flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur.
All 298 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 777 were killed, the majority of them Dutch, but with 38 Australian citizens and residents among them.
Photo: AFP
“It is sickening to watch and 12 months on from the downing of MH17 it is deeply concerning that this footage has emerged now,” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told the Nine Network, without being able to verify the authenticity of the video. “It is certainly consistent with the intelligence advice that we received 12 months ago, that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile.”
The newspaper claimed the footage, which it said was smuggled out of the fighters’ Donetsk base and only obtained this week, was filmed by the rebels themselves as they captured what they initially believed to be a Ukrainian air force fighter jet they had shot down.
It said the film records their dismay as they discover the aircraft was a commercial plane, but it also shows men, holding guns and dressed in army camouflage, wandering among the downed plane’s wreckage, rifling through bags and scattering their contents on the ground.
The newspaper said that in one frame a man wore a clearly visible identification tag from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic around his neck.
The release of the footage coincided with a service in Canberra to mark the tragedy’s one-year anniversary, attended by 120 relatives of those who died.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott unveiled a plaque, mounted on soil brought back from the spot where plane crashed, commemorating the Australian victims.
“Today we remember our dead, we thank those who brought them home, but most of all, we acknowledge the suffering of the bereaved,” Abbott said. “You have had the worst year of your life. Today our nation pauses to acknowledge your tragedy.”
Abbott earlier told national radio the video highlighted that “this was an atrocity, it was in no way an accident.”
“They may not have known that they were shooting down a passenger plane, but they were deliberately shooting out of the sky what they knew was a large aircraft,” he said. “There was a reckless indifference, if you like, to where that missile was going.”
The plane was shot down during a bout of heavy fighting last year between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, sparking global condemnation.
Ukraine and the West point the finger at the separatists, saying they could have used a BUK surface-to-air missile supplied by Russia, but Moscow denies involvement and instead accuses the Ukrainian military.
A criminal probe by a joint investigation team consisting of Australian, Belgian, Dutch, Malaysian and Ukrainian detectives is currently underway.
The five nations have also asked the UN Security Council to establish an international criminal tribunal to try those responsible for crimes connected to the plane’s downing.
Britain, one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, backed the move yesterday.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including