MH17 may have been shot down - Ukraine President

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko did not rule out that the Malaysian Airlines MH17 carrying 298 passengers may have been shot down.

"We do not exclude that the plane was shot down and confirm that the Ukraine Armed Forces did not fire at any targets in the sky," Poroshenko said in a statement posted on his website.

However, he was quick to add that the Ukraine’s Armed Forces ‘did not commit any actions to strike the targets in the air’.

He said the Boeing 777 which had disappeared from radar at about 4.20pm was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

It was supposed to have arrived at KL at 6.10am.

Poroshenko had ordered his government to immediately establish a state commission to investigate the incident.

“On behalf of the state, the President of Ukraine expressed the deepest and the most sincere condolences to friends and relatives of the deceased in this dreadful tragedy. All possible search-and-rescue operations are being conducted,” he said in the statement.

The plane is said to have came down at Torez, some 40 km from the Russia border, a conflict area between the Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Interior Minister adviser Anton Gerashchenko, the Boeing 777 aircraft flight was hit by a missile known as BUK missile.