GRABOVO, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine said a passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down Thursday as it flew over the country, and both the government and the pro-Russia separatists fighting in the region denied any responsibility for downing the plane. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines planes are parked at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Thursday, July 18, 2013. A Malaysia Airlines flight with nearly 300 people aboard crashed over eastern Ukraine... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken with a mobile phone provided by Andrei Kashtanov, smoke rises from where a Malaysia Airlines commercial plane crashed in eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 17, 2014. Malaysia Airlines... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this Nov. 15, 2012 photo, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 takes off from Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles. The plane, with the tail number 9M-MRD, is the same aircraft that was... (Associated Press) 
 
 Passenger wait at the departure hall at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Sepang, Malaysia, Friday, July 18, 2014. Malaysia Airlines said it lost contact with Flight MH17 over Ukrainian airspace... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken with a mobile phone provided by Andrei Kashtanov, smoke rises from where a Malaysia Airlines commercial plane crashed in eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 17, 2014. Malaysia Airlines... (Associated Press) 
 
 Airport security personnel look at the flight information board in the departure hall, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Sepang, Malaysia, Friday, July 18, 2014. Malaysia Airlines said it lost... (Associated Press) 
 
 Airport police stand guard at the arrival hall at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Sepang, Malaysia, Friday, July 18, 2014. Malaysia Airlines said it lost contact with Flight MH17 over Ukrainian... (Associated Press) 
 
 The main entrance of Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Thursday, July 17, 2014. A Ukrainian official said a passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down Thursday as it flew over the country and plumes... (Associated Press) 
 
 Passengers wait in line at the departure hall at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Sepang, Malaysia, Friday, July 18, 2014. Malaysia Airlines said it lost contact with Flight MH17 over Ukrainian... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken with a mobile phone provided by Andrei Kashtanov, smoke rises from where a Malaysia Airlines commercial plane crashed in eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 17, 2014. Malaysia Airlines... (Associated Press) 
 
 As plumes of black smoke rose up near a rebel-held village of Grabovo in eastern Ukraine, an Associated Press journalist counted at least 22 bodies at the crash site 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border. 
 
 The plane appeared to have broken up before impact and the burning wreckage — which included body parts and the belongings of passengers — was scattered over a wide area. 
 
 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the downing an act of terrorism and called for an international investigation into the crash. 
 
 The village of Grabovo is currently under the control of the separatists and the area has seen severe fighting between the two sides in recent days. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines confirmed that it received notification from Ukrainian aviation authorities that it had lost contact with flight MH17 at 1415 GMT some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Tamak waypoint, approximately 50 km (30 miles) from the Russia-Ukraine border. 
 
 It said the plane had 280 passengers and 15 crew aboard a Boeing 777 that left Amsterdam at 12.15 p.m. and was to arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 6.10 a.m. Friday. 
 
 Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on his Facebook page the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters (33,000 feet). He said it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 22,000 meters (72,000 feet). 
 
 The Malaysia Airlines plane is a Boeing 777-200ER, which was delivered to Malaysia Airlines on July 30, 1997, according to Flightglobal's Ascend Online Fleets, which sells and tracks information about aircraft. It has more than 43,000 hours of flight time and 6,950 takeoffs and landings. 
 
 Poroshenko said his country's armed forces didn't shoot at any airborne targets. 
 
 "We do not exclude that this plane was shot down, and we stress that the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not take action against any airborne targets," he said. "We are sure that those who are guilty in this tragedy will be held responsible." 
 
 Separatist leader Andrei Purgin told The Associated Press that he was certain that Ukrainian troops had shot the plane down but gave no explanation or proof for his statement. 
 
 Purgin said he did not know whether rebel forces owned Buk missile launchers, but said even if they did, they had no fighters capable of operating it. 
 
 A launcher similar to the Buk missile system was seen by Associated Press journalists earlier Thursday near the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne, which is held by the rebels. 
 
 It was the second time that a Malaysia Airlines plane was lost in less than six months. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It has not been found, but the search has been concentrated in the Indian Ocean far west of Australia. 
 
 There have been disputes over planes being shot down earlier in the region. 
 
 On Wednesday evening, a Ukrainian fighter jet was shot down by an air-to-air missile from a Russian plane, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday, adding to what Kiev says is mounting evidence that Moscow is directly supporting the separatist insurgents. Security Council spokesman Andrei Lysenko said the pilot of the Sukhoi-25 jet hit by the air-to-air missile was forced to bail after his jet was shot down. 
 
 Pro-Russia rebels, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for strikes Wednesday on two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the second jet was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile, but added the pilot was unscathed and managed to land his plane safely 
 
 Moscow denies Western charges that is supporting the separatists or sowing unrest in its neighbor. The Russian Defense Ministry couldn't be reached for comment Thursday about the Ukrainian jet being shot down. 
 
 Earlier this week, Ukraine said a military transport plane was shot down Monday by a missile fired from Russian territory. 
 
 Other passenger planes have been shot down before including: 
 
 — April 20, 1978: Korean Airlines Flight 902, which diverted from its planned course on a flight from Paris to Seoul and strayed over the Soviet Union. After being fired upon by an interceptor aircraft, the crew made a forced landing at night on the surface of a frozen lake. Two of the 97 passengers were killed by the hostile fire. 
 
 — Sept. 1, 1983: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shot down by at least one Soviet air-to-air missile after the 747 had strayed into Soviet airspace. All 240 passengers and 29 crew were killed. 
 
 — July 3, 1988: Iran Air Flight 655 Aircraft was shot down by a surface to air missile from the American naval vessel U.S.S. Vincennes. All 16 crew and 274 passengers were killed. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Leonard reported from Kiev, Ukraine. Contributing to this report were AP Airlines Writer Scott Mayerowitz in New York; Jill Lawless and Matthew Knight in London; Laura Mills and Jim Heintz in Moscow, and Eileen Ng and Satish Cheney in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Leonard reported from Kiev, Ukraine. Contributing to this report were AP Airlines Writer Scott Mayerowitz in New York; Jill Lawless and Matthew Knight in London; Laura Mills and Jim Heintz in Moscow, and Eileen Ng and Satish Cheney in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ||||| A Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down by a surface-to-air missile Thursday over separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine, apparently killing all 298 people on board and dramatically raising stakes in the conflict with the Kremlin-backed forces. 
 
 U.S. intelligence sources said tracking data from spy satellites and radar confirmed that the Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was hit in midair, but they couldn't immediately determine where the missile was launched. 
 
 Ukrainian officials said that Russia had recently supplied the separatists with the mobile Buk surface-to-air launching system, and that the military had not fired any antiaircraft missiles during the conflict with the separatists, which began in mid-April. A number of Ukrainian military aircraft have been shot down by the separatists. 
 
 Although Russia denied involvement, the downing of a passenger jet flying on a heavily traveled international route could sharply increase pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is accused by the United States, its allies and the Ukrainian government of backing the separatists. 
 
 Before the loss of the passenger jet Thursday, fighting in eastern Ukraine had claimed at least 500 lives in the four months since Russia seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, inspiring the separatists now occupying much of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 
 
 On Wednesday, the Obama administration stepped up sanctions against Russia for supporting the separatists, targeting some of the country's largest financial institutions, energy companies and weapons firms. 
 
 The loss of another plane dealt a new blow to Malaysia Airlines. It hasn't solved the mystery of what happened to Flight 370, which disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March. 
 
 Ukrainian Security Service communications intercepts made public after the early evening crash of Flight 17 suggest coordination between the separatists and Russian fighters across the border. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines said it lost contact with Flight 17, carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, after the aircraft failed to confirm its entry into Russian airspace on schedule at 5:20 p.m. The last contact was recorded about 4:20 p.m. by air traffic controllers. 
 
 The plane “disappeared from radar at [33,000 feet] and then crashed near the city of Shakhtersk in Ukraine's Donetsk region,” the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported. 
 
 Witnesses in the militant-held crash area about 25 miles west of the Russian border described a gut-wrenching scene. 
 
 “Distorted bodies of dead people and body parts are lying around everywhere in an open field,” Sergei Kavtaradze, a member of the Security Council of the separatists' self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said in a phone interview. 
 
 Two things were clear from rescue workers' reports, he said: Everyone on board was killed, and it “was not us who shot down the plane because we don't have this hardware.” 
 
 Ukrainian officials disputed that assertion. Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Interior Ministry, said Russia had recently supplied mobile missile systems to the separatists that are capable of taking down a plane at that altitude. 
 
 He demanded that Putin face an international tribunal in the disaster. 
 
 Neither the Kremlin nor major Russian media responded to the accusations that Moscow was behind the jet's downing. But Putin told his economic advisors meeting early Friday that the disaster was Ukraine's fault because of its offensive against separatists. 
 
 “This tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the military actions had not been renewed in southeastern Ukraine. And, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy,” the Kremlin news service quoted him as saying. 
 
 Ukrainian officials earlier Thursday accused Russian forces of being behind the downing the day before of a Ukrainian SU-25 ground-support warplane near Donetsk. 
 
 Shortly after the airliner went down, the former Russian special forces officer commanding the separatists in eastern Ukraine claimed responsibility for shooting down an AN-26 Ukrainian military transport plane. 
 
 “We warned them not to fly in our skies,” Igor Strelkov said on his Facebook page. “Peaceful people didn't suffer.” 
 
 He posted a video that later was removed from the page. 
 
 Pro-Russia separatists were the first to reach the crash site. 
 
 “Our self-defense units are already on the site,” said Andrei Purgin, first deputy premier of the breakaway region. “They already reported many dead passengers, including children.” 
 
 Sergei Taruta, the Kiev-appointed governor of the Donetsk region sidelined by the militants, said the separatists were blocking the crash site. 
 
 Russia's RIA Novosti news agency quoted Donetsk separatist leader Oleksandr Boroday as saying the separatists were calling a two- to three-day cease-fire to facilitate investigation of the crash. Boroday was quoted as saying the incident appeared to have been a “provocation.” 
 
 In spite of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, dozens of Europe-to-Asia flights have been passing over the region each day, aviation industry experts say. 
 
 Ukrainian officials had closed airspace below 32,000 feet, an altitude just below that at which the Malaysian jet was flying. 
 
 Mark Duell, vice president of operations at the flight tracking website FlightAware.com, said that flights from carriers that include Transaero Airlines, Emirates Airlines and Singapore Airlines have traveled over the region. 
 
 “We haven't found an airline that's been avoiding it previous to today,” he said. “Of course now that's changed.” 
 
 President Obama said the U.S. government was offering “any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why.” 
 
 Obama learned of the plane's downing while speaking on the phone with Putin on Thursday morning. Putin had requested the call with Obama to discuss the latest round of economic sanctions imposed by Washington and other Western governments. 
 
 News of the plane crash began to break while the two leaders spoke, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said later, and Putin mentioned the reports to Obama during the call. 
 
 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak issued a statement lamenting the “terrible and deeply shocking news” of the second loss of a Malaysia Airlines 777 this year. 
 
 On March 8, Flight 370 bound for Beijing went missing, setting off a global search that has riveted international attention. No trace of the flight has been located despite the costliest lost-aircraft search in history.
– A Malaysia Airlines passenger plane crashed in Ukraine this morning, and all 283 passengers and 15 crew are feared dead, reports Reuters. A Ukrainian interior ministry official says the Boeing 777 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, though it's too early to confirm the claim. (US intelligence agrees that a missile is to blame.) The plane, which originated in Amsterdam and was bound for Kuala Lumpur, was flying at 33,000 feet when it "began to drop; afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory," a witness tells Interfax. It came down over territory held by separatists about 25 miles short of the Russian border, near the city of Donetsk, reports the LA Times. The region has seen fierce fighting in recent days. Immediately afterward, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said his troops "did not take action against any airborne targets," and pro-Russian separatists also denied responsibility. The plane appeared to have broken apart before hitting the ground, reports the AP, with one of its reporters counting at least 22 bodies at the crash site. President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone about the disaster, though no details about the discussion were immediately released. Malaysia Airlines, still reeling from the disappearance of another passenger jet, confirmed via Twitter that it "has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace." The airline's initial statement is here.