A surface-to-air missile struck a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over strife-torn eastern Ukraine, downing the flight near the eastern border with Russia in an area controlled by pro-Moscow separatists.  It’s believed 27 Australians were on board.

US Vice President Joe Biden said that the crash was “not an accident” and that the jet had “apparently blown out of the sky”.  Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was even more blunt, saying the crash was a “terrorist” attack.

“Today’s tragedy showed again that terrorism is not localized, but a world problem.  And the external aggression against Ukraine is not just our problem, but a threat to European and global security," Poroshenko said.

The plane broke up in mid-air, according to witnesses, and fell to the earth in a 15-kilometer debris field, damaging a number of homes and apartment blocks.  The main crash site was immediately marked by a fiery explosion in a wheat field.  It was a grisly scene with human bodies strewn about the smoldering wreckage, and emergency workers sifting through it to gather the passports of the victims.

Malaysian Airlines says 283 Passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board.  In addition to the 27 Australians, nine British flyers and at least 23 Americans were also believed to have been among the passengers and crew on Flight MH17, as were 154 Dutch travelers.  At least 80 of the dead are children.

Malaysian authorities say it was traveling a route that was not subject to international restrictions, despite the fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.  The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had warned as early as April that passenger planes shouldn’t fly over eastern Ukraine, and US airlines had changed their routes a long time ago.

Another Malaysian Airlines airplane flew the same route a day earlier without incident.  But MH17 is now the third plane shot down in that area this week; pro-Russian forces earlier shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet and a Ukrainian cargo plane, and those attacks came after Russia vowed retaliation for a Ukrainian artillery strike that crossed the eastern border and killed a Russian man in his home garden.