The world on Friday pointed a unified finger squarely at Russian President Vladimir Putin for his country’s support of the violent Ukrainian rebels who fired the anti-aircraft missile that blew a passenger jet out of the sky.
Separatists had a firm grip on the massive crime scene, fueling fears of a cover-up by keeping investigators off the site.
Rebels were also accused of hiding the “black box” data recorders that could be a smoking gun in the attack that killed all 298 aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
And the Kiev government released video of what it said was a Buk launcher — with two missiles missing — heading toward the Russian border after the crash.
World leaders called for Russia to step in and disarm the rabble of fighters who have divided the former Soviet state.
“Russia can end this war,” US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power urged at a meeting of the Security Council a day after the deaths over a war-torn corner of Ukraine. “Russia must end this war.”
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Saturday called for an independent investigation.
“Australia takes a very dim view of countries which facilitate the killing of Australians. The idea that Russia can wash its hands of responsibility because this happened in Ukrainian airspace just does not stand up to serious scrutiny,” Abbott said.
In other developments:
- Officials said the death toll included 80 children, three of them infants.
- There was one American citizen among the dead — Fort Lee, NJ-born dual Dutch citizen Quinn Lucas Schansman, 19.
- US intelligence analysts described a “working theory” that the Russian military supplied the missile that rebels used to strike down the plane, CNN reported.
- The UN Security Council called for a “full, thorough and independent international investigation” into the crash.
- Russia removed sections of the Wikipedia entry on the crash that accused it of providing “terrorists” with the missile that downed the jet.
- Malaysia sent a team of investigators and humanitarian aides — and the United States has offered the assistance of the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board.
The Times of London reported Saturday that the bumbling separatists may have been targeting a Ukrainian military plane that was in the air about the same time — but lacked the proper radar to differentiate between the two.
“They only had the battle radar, they did not have the scanning radar,” a source told the paper, adding that scanning radar would have identified the jet while battle radar would only lock onto the target.
Bodies and debris rained down across a section of eastern Ukraine near the Russian border — and assault-rifle toting rebels immediately seized control of the crime scene.
They allowed probers access to only a 218-yard portion of the nine-mile stretch of wreckage, and then chased them off after 75 minutes.
Yet civilians wandered through the hellish, disorganized scene, and looting was rampant.
“It basically looks like the biggest crime scene in the world right now, guarded by a bunch of guys in uniform with heavy firepower who are quite inhospitable,” said Michael Bociukiw, spokesman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
“A visibly intoxicated armed guard fired his rifle in the air when one of the observers walked out of the prescribed area,” he said.
Anton Gerashchenko, a Kiev government adviser, said the rebels were stealing cash, jewelry and even credit cards from the dead.
Untrained civilians — including off-duty coal miners — combed through wheat and sunflower fields on which lay scattered wreckage.including seats, chunks of fuselage and charred body parts that remained uncovered for hours. One corpse fell through the roof of a 65-year-old woman’s home. “I heard a roar, and she landed in the kitchen,” she said.
The victim’s naked body was still lying inside the woman’s house when Reuters spoke to her Friday.
Corpses and body parts lay in the high grass, marked by what an eyewitness for the BBC described as a “rudimentary stick with a white piece of cloth tied to it.”
Donetsk separatist leader Aleksandr Borodai claimed on Friday that “no black boxes have been found” and that he hopes the international experts now on the scene “will track them down and create a picture of what has happened,” according to NBC News.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chimed in that Moscow wouldn’t take the black boxes even if handed over.
But Ukraine’s UN ambassador in Geneva, Yuri Klymenko, raised concerns that the black boxes could be tampered with.
“It’s very important that unbiased international experts will be the first persons who get access to the black boxes,” he said. “The issue is who will . . . open the boxes. We would like to have the true information, not the fake one.”
The black boxes contain cockpit voice and data recordings, and could help establish how Flight 17 was shot down and where the missile came from.