This picture of smoke allegedly from the crashed plane has been spreading on Russian social media.  This is the final picture of MH17 as it takes off from Amsterdam just hours before it was shot down over Ukraine.  The crash site near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held eastern Ukraine  People stand on the wreckage of the downed airliner.  Emergencies Ministry members work at the Malaysia Airlines crash site.  A still-smoking part of the crash site  An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at the crash site.  Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17′s flight path  People walk through what appears to be the airplane’s interior.  Russian 9K37 medium-range surface-to-air missiles  Take a close look at a supercell storm.  Baby lions snuggle, plane wreckage and mourners crowd Ukraine, a...  The Yokohama Sand Art Exhibition invited artists from around the world...  Relive the giant leap for mankind 45 years later.  Robots are moving on up, typhoons cause havoc, a cat-and-mouse...  Men, women and families were snapped surrounded by a week’s...  Want to see the most adorable thing ever? Look no...  Dogs get fashionable, Pope Francis gets immortalized, bulls get revenge...  A puzzling sight on the Hudson, seals snuggle, the skyline...  It’s a far cry from the Marlboro man: See a day in...  The annual Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho,...  Zombies assemble in London, unrest in Ukraine and Israel continues,...  A tiger takes a dip, a typhoon makes serious waves,...  A baby panda loves her birthday cake, the running of...  Prince Amedeo of Belgium gets married. The festival of San Fermín...  Malaysia Airlines flight attendant Shazana Salleh was believed to be aboard Flight MH17.Photo: Facebook  A Russian-made surface-to-air missile blew a Malaysian Airlines jetliner out of the sky Thursday as it cruised at 33,000 feet over Ukraine — killing all 298 aboard, including 23 Americans, officials said.  The Boeing 777 had left Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur at 6:15 a.m. New York time and was shot down three hours later — raining body parts and debris over a nine-mile stretch of a rebel-held village near the Russian border.  The doomed aircraft had been tracked by a surface-to-air missile system right before it went down, a senior US official told CNN.  The United States was working to track the rocket’s trajectory to determine its origin, the official said.  American intelligence authorities believe it unlikely that the Ukrainian government had the capacity to take down the plane. Kiev was quick to blame the tragedy on pro-Russian, anti-government rebels who have been waging a separatist war.  Emergencies Ministry members work at the site of the crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region July 17.Photo: REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev  The strike appeared to be the work of a Russian-made Buk missile-launcher system, and the passenger jet may have been targeted in the mistaken belief that it was a military transport plane, weapons analysts and counterterrorism experts said Thursday night.  Igor Girkin, a Russian rebel militia commander, misidentified the type of plane in gleefully claiming responsibility for downing the aircraft.  “We have just shot down an AN-26 plane in the Torez region, it is lying somewhere near the Progress mine,” read a post at 5:50 p.m. Moscow time on the ­social-media site VKontakte, The Washington Post reported.  The post was removed later Thursday when news broke that the downed aircraft was, in fact, a commercial jet.  Ukraine’s security services later produced what they said were intercepted phone conversations implicating the rebels.  Girkin ecstatically announces that rebel forces had shot down a plane, shouting, “The plane was hit!” He adds, “Look at those black spots, these are the parts flying . . . it was a blast! Look, look, black smoke!”  Girkin, whose nickname is “Ivan the Terrible” and who sometimes uses the moniker Igor Strelkov, also tweeted, “We warned you — do not fly in our sky.”  An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at the crash site.Photo: Reuters  But later, spokespersons for the rebels’ self-proclaimed state, the ­Donetsk People’s Republic — which controls the area where the jet went down — denied any involvement and blamed the Ukrainian government.  Russian President Vladimir ­Putin, too, laid the blame on Kiev.  “This tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the military actions had not been renewed in southeast Ukraine,” he said.  The pro-Russian separatists, meanwhile, claimed to have found the downed plane’s “black box,” which they were expected to turn over to Moscow, fueling concerns of a cover-up.  Already, reports from the debris field indicated that the armed terrorists were hindering the investigation on the ground.  Ukrainian President Petro Poro­shenko deplored the attack.  “We call it neither an incident, nor a disaster, but a terrorist act,” he said. “We are sure that those who are guilty in this tragedy will be held responsible.  “We stress that the armed forces of Ukraine did not take ­action against any airborne targets.”  An amateur video showed a fireball as the plunging wreckage hit the ground and thick, black smoke billowed skyward.  And photographs posted on Twitter showed debris and bodies strewn miles around the site.  In addition to the 23 American victims, there were 154 Dutch, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians, six UK citizens, four Germans, four Belgians, four French, three Filipinos and one Canadian. The remaining nationalities were unclear.  A Ukrainian air force SU-25 was allegedly shot down by Russians on Thursday.Photo: EPA  White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Obama, who was in New York for fund-raisers Thursday, spoke to Putin by phone about the situation.  “The world is watching reports of a downed passenger jet near the Russia-Ukraine border,” Obama later said.  “It looks like it might be a terrible tragedy. Right now, we’re working to determine whether there were American citizens on board. That is our first priority.”  Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the jet made no distress call and that its route had been declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organization.  The Buk medium-range missile believed to have taken it down was developed during the Cold War by the former Soviet Union and is used by the Russian Federation, which has supplied sophisticated weaponry to the rebels.  The disaster came just over four months after another Malaysia Airlines jet — Flight 370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing — vanished without a trace with 239 passengers and crew aboard.  Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17′s flight pathPhoto: FlightAware.com
A Malaysian airliner was shot down over the Ukraine on Thursday -- killing all 295 aboard, including 23 Americans -- and a top US official blamed Russia’s military. Rep. Michael McC...