You're reading: Reuters: Burning wreckage, dozens of bodies at scene of plane crash in Ukraine

Dozens of bodies were scattered around the smouldering wreckage of a passenger jet that crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 19, 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 scattered 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 flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was carrying almost 300 people.

Reuters also informs that separatist leader Aleksander Borodai blamed the downing of a Malaysian passenger airliner in eastern Ukraine on the country’s government forces.

“Apparently, it’s a passenger airliner indeed, truly shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force,” Borodai told Russia’s state-run Rossiya 24 TV broadcaster.

Kyiv denied the involvement of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ukrainian armed forces were not involved in a Malaysian passenger plane being brought down in eastern Ukraine, the presidential press service said on Thursday.

Interfax quoted it as saying that President Petro Poroshenko did not exclude that the plane had been shot down.

“This is the third event in the last few days following An-26 and SU-25 planes being brought down. We do not exclude that this plane was also shot down and we stress that the armed forces of Ukraine did not carry out any action to destroy targets in the air,” the press service said.

A Malaysian passenger plane that came down in eastern Ukraine on July 17 was shot down by a Buk ground-to-air missile, a Ukrainian interior ministry official, quoted by Interfax news agency said.

The official, Anton Gerashchenko, said all the 280 passengers and 15 crew had been killed. 

Source: Reuters