海角大神

World leaders are calling for a swift, objective investigation into who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, while accusations continue to fly between the Russian and Ukrainian governments and war zone conditions pose a challenge to the integrity of the investigation.

In the latest figures released, Malaysia Airlines confirmed 298 people were on board the Boeing 777 with 154 Dutch passengers, 43 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine passengers from the United Kingdom, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos, and one Canadian. Forty-one people still have not been identified. Passengers included several prominent experts聽traveling to the world鈥檚 largest summit on AIDS in Australia.

A statement on the airlines' website said, 鈥淢alaysia Airlines confirms that the aircraft did not make a distress call.鈥�

Investigators are faced with a set of challenging conditions: working in a war zone and trying to gain access to black boxes, with allegations that some of the boxes have聽already been sent to Moscow. Rebels have said they will allow investigators into the area.

Russian president Vladimir Putin held a moment of silence for the victims at a meeting on the Russian economy. As soon as the moment ended, Mr. Putin placed blame on the Ukrainian government,聽according to a Kremlin transcript of his comments.

In a video address, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko blamed the plane鈥檚 downing on 鈥渢errorists鈥� fighting against government forces in the country鈥檚 east and said the event should be a 鈥渨ake-up call for the whole world.鈥�

President Poroshenko also made reference to a conversation that was released yesterday by Ukraine鈥檚 security agency, the SBU. The conversation allegedly shows a fighter in eastern Ukraine, Igor Bezler, the self-proclaimed leader of the Donetsk People鈥檚 Republic, reporting to a Russian intelligence officer (allegedly Vasili Geranin), as well as other conversations. The conversations have been translated into English, German, French, and Polish.聽

Another conversation in the recording has an unidentified militant speaking with someone identified as Kozitsyn.

As the Monitor reported yesterday, the social media page of Mr. Bezler聽was quickly scrubbed after taking responsibility for the shooting: 鈥淚n the vicinity of Torez, we just downed a plane, an AN-26. It is lying somewhere in the Progress Mine. We have issued warnings not to fly in our airspace.鈥澛�