A man looks at a screen displaying 'Pray for MH17'' at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 18 July: photo - EPA/AHMAD YUSNI
Poland’s president and prime minister will meet on Friday afternoon to discuss security implications of the plane crash in eastern Ukraine which killed 298 on Thursday afternoon.
Poland’s foreign ministry released a statement on Friday condemning what appears to be the shooting down of the Malaysian commercial airline and expressed “outrage at the use of advanced anti-aircraft weapons against a civilian target”.
The ministry also called for an “independent, international investigation” into the causes of the crash.
President Komorowski will also be meeting with National Security Bureau chief Stanisław Koziej to discuss the latest development in Ukraine.
Separatists, who are in possession of the two black box flight recorders, told the OSCE they would ensure safe access at the scene of the disaster for international experts.
Reuters reports that locals in the area - 40 kilometres from the border with Russia, near the regional capital of Donetsk – have been collecting parts of the wreckage as souvenirs, raising fears that evidence could be contaminated.
An emergency worker said at least 100 bodies had been found so far and that debris was spread over 15 km, with white flags in corn fields marking where the remains fell.
German chancellor Angela Merkel, calling for an immediate investigation to the causes of the disaster said at a press conference on Friday in Berlin that "These events have once again shown us that what is required is a political solution and above all that it is also Russia that is responsible for what is happening in Ukraine at the moment.”
On reports that the aircraft may have been shot from the sky by sophisticated ground-to-air BUK missiles, Merkel said that, "It is indeed the case that the separatists are heavily- armed and there are many indications that some of these weapons have come across the border from Russia."
People with Polish and Ukrainian flags arrive to the Dutch embassy in Moscow, Russia, 18 July 2014, to commemorate victims of the Malaysia Arilines Boeing 777 crash: photo - EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV
President Putin has blamed the Kiev government for renewing its offensive against rebels two weeks ago and also called for a "thorough and unbiased" investigation.
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko blamed Russia for the disaster, adding that "the external aggression against Ukraine is not just our problem but a threat to European and global security”.
The Ukraine government has released a video of a recording of rebels and their commander, indicating that they had shot down a plane in the area on Thursday afternoon. At first they thought it was a Ukrainian military plane, only to discover that it was a commercial jet.
“This plane that was shot down near Sheznoe-Torez, it turned out to be a passenger airliner. It crashed near Grabovo, there are bodies strewn everywhere, women and children,” a man says in the video.
“On TV they are saying that it was a Ukrainian Antonov-26, but the writing on the side says ‘Malaysian Airlines’,” a voice says on the recording, which has not been independently verified.
Polisj Radio's senior foreign correspondent Jarek Kociszewski says that whoever fired sophisticated missiloes at the airliner must have been highly trained.
“There were, and there are, people able to operate [the BUK ground-to-air missile system]. The Ukrainians claim that they are Russians, because they cannot be just local Ukrainian peasants who just happen to find sophisticated ground-to-air missiles in their back yard,” he says. (pg/jb)