Other aircraft were near MH17 when it crashed, says report

New doubts regarding how Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine has arisen following reports that military aircraft were spotted in the air when the incident happened.

According to a report in Russian news channel RT.com, a Russian air safety consultancy has released a photograph with readings taken by a radar station located near the Ukrainian border.

Quoting Aviation Safety consultancy CEO, Sergey Melnichenko, the report said "there were one or two warplanes in the air close to the Malaysian airliner."

"The data clearly shows that at the moment of the crash and after it, there were planes moving north of the Boeing's course. Most likely, they were military, because the spots are very close to each other. The conclusion is that there were either one or two aircraft there," Melnichenko told the daily.

Melnichenko added that the military planes would be on the left of MH17 and there are some photo evidence from the crash sites showing the damaged cockpit’s left side, consistent with a scenario of an attack by those planes.

This is also consistent with the statement by Dutch National Prosecutors' Office chief investigator Fred Westerbeke, who told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel in October that they are not discounting the theory that another plane shot down Flight MH17.

In the July 17 incident, all of MH17's 298 passengers including 15 crew members were killed.