Dutch authorities have confirmed 27 Australians were among 295 people on board a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet which was shot down over Ukraine.
Flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was reportedly shot down by a missile near the village of Torez in the region of Donetsk.
All 280 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has desrcribed the disaster “an act of terrorism” and has called for an international investigation into the crash.
“We do not exclude that the plane was shot down and confirm that the Ukraine Armed Forces did not fire at any targets in the sky,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime minister Tony Abbott said that if the Boeing 777 was in fact shot down, “that is an unspeakable crime and the perpetrators must be brought to justice”.
The disaster comes just four months after Malaysia Airlines 370 , another Boeing 777 carrying more than 200 people went missing over the Indian Ocean. The fate of that aircraft remains a mystery.
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