Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
Updated 22.10pm
Screengrab: Flightaware
A MALAYSIAN PASSENGER plane carrying 295 people has crashed in eastern Ukraine.
A Ukrainian government official said it had been “shot down” in an apparent missile strike.
The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine ‘bears responsibility’ for the crash.
US officials confirmed tonight that a surface-to-air missile shot down the passenger jet.
Ukraine’s president called the loss of the plane an “act of terrorism” but rebels denied shooting it down.
Malaysia Airlines confirmed in a statement that Ukrainian Air Traffic Control had lost contact with flight MH17 from Amsterdam “at 30km from Tamak waypoint, approximately 50km from the Russia-Ukraine border”. A Malaysian investigation team are on the way to Ukraine.
The plane was en route to Kuala Lumpur.
Tragedy
It is believed that all on board have been killed in the tragedy.
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson told TheJournal.ie said the Department was aware of the situation, and was liaising with the relevant embassies in Prague and the Hague.
The nationalities of those on board have been released at a press conference. They are as follows:
All crew members were from Malaysia. Other nationalities have not yet been determined.
There’s no indication that any Irish people were on board the flight.
Dozens of severely mutilated corpses are strewn in the wreckage of the airliner that, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
The reporter said debris was spread out for kilometres.
Meanwhile, Associated Press said one of its journalists had counted at least 22 bodies at the wreckage site.
Photos broadcast by the Russian channel LifeNews showed the bodies of a number of passenger, and smoke rising from the smouldering wreckage.
‘Explode in mid-air’
Eyewitnesses told AFP that the jet appeared to explode in mid-air before wreckage rained down over a large area.
Shocked local residents struggled to take in the scene of the carnage and said that remnants of the jet had been found in a village some 9 kilometres from the centre of the crash site.
“I had just gone to sleep at around 1600 (1300 GMT) when I heard an enormous bang,” Katya, 64, told AFP. “It was like an earthquake.”
Her daughter Natalya, 36, said that she had fled to safety when the sound of the explosion rumbled overhead.
“I took my baby and went and hid in the basement,” she said.
There was no sign of any rescue workers going through the gruesome site.
‘Shot down’
Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, said earlier on his Facebook page the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 metres when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.
He said in a press conference that the were not treating the incident as an “accident” but an “act of terrorism”.
The country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, has ordered an investigation into what he called the Malaysian “airplane catastrophe”.
In a statement released in the wake of the crash, he said the plane disappeared from radar screens at 4.20pm local time.
The statement expresses “deep and sincere condolences” to relatives of those on board and says a full search and rescue effort is under way.
And it says the “Armed Forces of Ukraine did not take action against any airborne targets”.
The statement concludes by saying the Ukrainian government wants to make sure the “perpetrators of the tragedy” are brought to justice.
Meanwhile, separatist leader Alexander Borodai has insisted the plane was shot down by Ukrainian government forces.
Ukraine rebels say ready for temporary truce after plane crash, reports AFP.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was “shocked” at the tragedy.
The Donetsk region government said the crash had happened near a village called Grabovo, which it said was currently under the control of separatists.
The region has seen severe fighting in recent days. In the latest incident before today’s crash, a Ukrainian fighter was shot down by an air-to-air missile from a Russian plane.
Airlines have been paying their respects to those that have lost their lives:
There are reports that the plane may have been flying in restricted air space, however this has been disputed:
Sky News reports that the black box from the flight has been found.
President Obama has told aides to keep in touch with Ukraine officials and keep him briefed on the situation, according to White House Press Corps reporters.
A number of videos said to be from the region and posted online today show thick plumes of smoke rising from an apparent crash site.
None of the footage has been independently verified…
Includes reporting from AP & AFP.
Additional reporting Christina Finn
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
To all the people blaming the Gardai on this they were busy dealing with a major collision on the m9 at Thomastown which resulted in a large section of the motorway being cleared. They have more important things to be dealing with than ensuring a generation of people who think the world revolves around them getting to a festival ! Your day was slightly changed and you were inconvenienced , it happens , get over it.
@Darren Moore: ?
@Darren Moore: First world millennial problems…
@Darren Moore: is that section of the M9 close to where the festival is, I’m unfamiliar with the area? If so it wouldn’t have just been a reduction in availability of Gardai causing the issue, but also diversions due to the accident.
I think those involved in the accident have been significantly more inconvenienced than a group of festival goers who would have heard about the incident on the radio and didnt modify their plans accordingly
@Darren Moore: well said I totally concur! Next year now they can go down the night before. Simples
@Spbeak: don’t just blame millenia ls its also become common aming middle age because the platform is available to complain. Quit generalisation its mud
@Darren Moore: delays while travelling to a festival on a bank holiday weekend? We need an oireachtas committee to investigate this ASAP.
Jesus Barbara chill out, maybe you should have left earlier
@Stephen Walshe: in fairness, if you check out the Twitter feed, there are people who left Dublin at 11:30 or earlier and still weren’t there at 9pm. Then people saying another 90 mins to get checked in once you arrive. How much earlier should people have left do you reckon?
How the hell could there be that much hassle with only 20,000 people. Its obviously extremely poor planning and management.
Tailbacks for miles in Carrick-on-Suir from mid afternoon and not a cop to be seen, they b out Monday morning with the bag when people goin home tho
@Ole dan tucker: the Garda I met directed us back towards Carrick-on-Suir only for us to spend 2 hours coming back the same way! 3 by roads into 1 doesn’t work.
@Ole dan tucker: true that, drove to galway then Killarney didn’t see one garda. That’s unique.
I live about 20 mins from Curraghmore. It took me 4 hours to drop somebody off and get home again. I don’t mind traffic jams and I wasn’t in a hurry to get home but it was strange that there is a huge estate with many entrance gates and loads of space for parking and yet getting into the space was so difficult. In those 3.40 hours it took to get in we saw one Garda and three people in high vis jackets. It seems rather strange. Hopefully everybody is in there now and will have fun .
Bought tickets for All Together, ended up All Together in a traffic jam…I really don’t see the issues…
@Robin Basstard: and you can cap it off listening to Fontaines BC and their dinosaur music
@alan: retro 90s/dinosaur is so in right now you uncool kid.
@alan: Dinosaur music? It appears you are a simpleton
@alan: it is DC
Maybe they need to sell timed entrance tickets. Arrive between a certain 2 hour period or something.
@Sean Ryan: that might work in Germany, not for a festival in Ireland. Get real
@Jazz Buckler: it would work if implemented. What’s your soloution?
We left Artane at 10:30am today.
After 11 hours we got to the festival, then we got asked to go in a line for a camp site only to be told it’s full. Absolutely dreadfully organized. Decided to leave and we’ve been given a full refund.
Whilst there NONE of the toilets had toilet paper. Avoid!
@Madra: hate when u need a big massive poop and
theres no poop paper available and so u end up in bits full of poop hoping you don’t poop yourself
@Madra: if everyone was delayed, surly you all arrived in the same order you would have, just over a longer duration, hence, the full campsite would have been an issue regardless, it just took longer to become full. As for the toilet issue, have you never been to a festival before, if so you’d know to bring your own toilet roll?
@Madra: didn’t you have the cop on to bring your own ar$e roll with over 20,000 ppl at an event you can assume toilet paper would be as rare as hens teeth.
@Madra: you didn’t bring your own toilet roll?
@Madra: you didn’t bring your own toilet roll so you asked for a refund?
15,000 people at Indie 19, in Mitchelstown tonight, a small town in North Cork and not a bother getting in or out of it, just shows what good planning can do.
Perhaps if every child wasn’t dropped by a suv 4×4 there wouldn’t be half the traffic problem.
It’s rediculous. I blame FFG for this obviously. I’m a typical “The Journal” reader with astute political acumen and an honest sense of fairness and equality. So I know when I see a Government led plot to upset citizens bank holiday weekend. Bla bla bla idi0ts. Jackíns all came down using their sat navs instead of following the Garda traffic plan. Then they go blaming the Gardai for the problems. Nuff said.
@Sonic: Haha I enjoyed that comment
No logical reason for such delays. We were lucky getting to gates relatively quickly but then spent 45mins to travel <1km. Made no sense as they were only letting 1 car at a time into huge field. Madness.
Their supposed apology was some joke. Most of it talking about how great the site and festival was etc. Red rag to a bull I’d imagine!
Can’t wait for the Netflix documentary
Ireland can’t do festival parking. There is never adequate plans or space allowing proper parking. There is usually no budget as maximum profit rules.
@Martin Sinnott: wrong. Never had an issue at EP
@Rob Hall: plenty of issues in the early years
@Martin Sinnott: I never had an issue at the Forever Young Festival! It was brilliantly organised with plenty of folk in high visibility jackets and all without exception were extremely helpful! Please stop running Ireland down – it really is a fabulous country with great events in the main!
They said to follow the traffic plan and don’t put Portlaw into gps.. so everyone put Portlaw in their gps
First world problems. Poor us with our delayed gratification – it’s not exactly Ebola!
@Spbeak:
Surely you can understand people’s frustrations after spending hard earned money and being subjected to such incompetence on the organisers behalf. You’d be bullin if ya missed a band you wanted to see cause you were stuck in unnecessary traffic.
@Spbeak: Last time I checked we were first world people living in a first world country.
@Ajax Penumbra: a very poorly run first world country by all accounts
Thoughts and prayers for the poor darlings. Let’s make the world revolve around these people again.
Left Dublin at 1 and arrived in carpark at 4 and that was with a quick stop off in Portlaw. Not that bad?
We left dry land as the cock crooe in the morning
And he crooe in the afternoon
He crooe by mistake in the evening cause he thought it was d millennium
The problem was obvious once we got to the car park, the stewarts didn’t have a clue. Taking far too long trying to park every single car individually. It was ridiculous. I’ve never seen a car park at a festival like it!
have your say