The wreckage of Malaysia Air flight 17, believed to have been downed by a missile in Ukraine exactly a year ago Friday, can be seen in a new video released by an Australian news channel this week.
The footage reportedly shows pro-Russian separatists walking around the crash site and looking in the luggage of the 298 passengers and crew members who lay dead. The wreckage site is in the rebel-held areas of
Ukraine in the Dontesk region, reported News.com.
News Corp Australia obtained the video, which has yet to be authenticated, and say it was shot by the rebels themselves who seemed to believe that they had shot down a Ukrainian air force fighter jet.
But the rebels soon realize it was actually a passenger jet when they open luggage and pour its contents to the ground. Another portion of the video appears to show a plane ticket, illustrating that it was indeed a commercial flight.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott called the video "an atrocity," according to News.com, while the country's foreign minister Julie Bishop said it was "sickening to watch." There were 38 Australian citizens aboard the flight, according to News.com.
"It is certainly consistent with the intelligence advice that we received 12 months ago, that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile," Bishop told
Australia's Channel Nine, according to The Telegraph. "[The victims'] grief is inconsolable and the burden of grieving and then seeing this footage will be almost too much to bear."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement on the anniversary of the plane's downing that the passenger jet could not have been attacked without "a direct order from the highest political and
military leadership" of Russia, reported CBS News.
Poroshenko added that a memorial would be built to honor the victims of the flight when the Ukrainian government regained control of the area, wrote CBS News.
"With support from all free nations of the world we have enough strength to overcome it [separatist threat]," Poroshenko said, according to CBS News. "The bits of Donbas, the entire Crimea — will be back, in Ukraine. We will resurrect everything that has been destroyed, we will mend our wounds."