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Fra Curt Lewis Ukraine rebels 'destroy MH17 clues' Ukraine has accused pro-Russian rebels of trying to destroy evidence of "international crimes" at the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines plane. It said the rebels "led by Russia" were preventing international experts from starting their investigation. An OSCE team is for a second day being prevented by militiamen from reaching the wreckage. The jet was reportedly hit by a missile over a rebel-held area in east Ukraine on Thursday. All 298 people died. Both Ukraine and the rebels have accused each other of shooting it down. The Boeing 777 flight MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. It fell between Krasni Luch in Luhansk region and Shakhtarsk in the neighbouring region of Donetsk. Latest figures released by Malaysia Airlines show the plane was carrying 192 Dutch nationals (including one with dual US citizenship), 44 Malaysians (including 15 crew), 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians and 10 Britons (including one with dual South African citizenship, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines, and one each from Canada and New Zealand. Pressure on Russia In a statement, the Ukrainian government complained that "the terrorists" had taken 38 bodies to a morgue in the rebel-held city of Donetsk. It said the rebels were also trying to transport the plane's wreckage to Russia. The UN Security Council has called for a full and independent international investigation into the crash Flowers, teddy bears and a note reading "Remember. Mourn" lie at the crash site. Photo: 19 July 2014 The tragedy has sent shocked the world community OSCE monitors say pro-Russian gunmen again blocked their access to the wreckageline Both Britain and the US are now publicly pointing the finger at rebels in eastern Ukraine and maybe Russia as well. Both say they think the Malaysian airliner was probably shot down by a missile fired from rebel-held territory - and perhaps with Russian help. But turn on Russian TV and you enter a parallel universe, where Kiev, not Moscow, is the likely culprit: speculation that Ukrainian jets may have tailed the airliner before it crashed; colourful theories that maybe Ukrainian forces were really trying to target Putin's Presidential jet and got the wrong plane. The question is which version is shaping President Putin's thinking. And whose opinion will he bear in mind as he decides how to handle this crisis. line The world community, Ukraine added, must put pressure on Russia to pull back its terrorists and allow Ukrainian and international experts to carry out their inquiry. Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong-Lai said it would be "inhumane" if Malaysian experts would not be given access to the crash site. He also expressed concern that the site was not properly sealed and could be tampered with. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was essential for investigators to get full access to the crash site. "Quite possibly there are attempts in place to sanitise the site. The site needs to be secure. The investigation needs to take place. And frankly anyone who tries to obstruct this is no friend of justice, is no friend of peace," he said. Russia has meanwhile hit back at the West, accusing it of waging an information war against Moscow. The defence ministry challenged Ukraine to produce details of what its anti-aircraft systems were doing at the time of the crash. Confusion remains as to whether the plane's flight recorders - the so-called black boxes - have been found. After initial claims that they had been located, and one sent to Russia, a Donetsk separatist leader, Aleksander Borodai said they had been not yet been discovered. 'Act of terrorism' Meanwhile, the team from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is now at the crash site. It says that after an initial refusal, armed rebels allowed the observers to proceed on foot - but blocked their access to the fields where the wreckage is. However, OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said the monitors were seeing parts of the field they had not seen before. On Friday, the observers said the rebels had limited their access to the wreckage, with one gunman firing shots into the air. Ukraine's government called Thursday's disaster an "act of terrorism" and released what they say are intercepted phone conversations that proved the plane was shot down by separatists. Ukrainian officials also said they had evidence Russia military personnel operated a sophisticated Buk missile system that is thought to have been used to shoot down the plane. The pro-Russian separatists claim a Ukrainian air force jet brought down the airliner.

The Challenges Of Investigating The Malaysia Airlines Disaster Ukrainian coal miners search the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines plane near the eastern village of Rozsypne. The area is under the control of pro-Russian separatists who are fighting the Ukrainian government. The crash site of the Malaysia Airlines flight in eastern Ukraine holds many important clues about what happened to the plane. But that site is under the control of pro-Russian separatists who are suspected of involvement in shooting the plane down. The rebel fighters say they are giving access to investigators, including those from the Ukrainian government, though one Ukrainian official who visited the scene Friday said he was not given full access. Here are some of the key questions on the investigation into Flight MH17: The U.N. Security Council called for a "thorough and independent investigation" of the downing of this plane. Is that possible, in the middle of a war zone? It's likely to be very difficult. Even though there's been talk of a cease-fire to facilitate an investigation, there were reports of fighting Friday within earshot of the wreckage site. Normally, a crash like this would be investigated by the country in whose airspace it took place. Pro-Russian paramilitary groups have declared independence in the region, and they've been claiming the airspace, too. The separatists said today that they would allow investigators access to the site, including international experts. About 30 observers and experts from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe visited the scene. The regional governor, who is on the side of the Ukrainian government, charged that the paramilitaries were interfering with the investigation and not giving the experts full access to the wreckage. What would the investigators be looking for? Some outside analysts have said the experts may be able to figure out where the plane was hit and determine the missile's trajectory. That could show where the missile was fired from. They'll also be looking for fragments of the missile itself, because these weapons generally have markings that show where and when they were made. One big problem is that the plane was apparently hit at high altitude and the debris and bodies of passengers came down over a very wide area. Videos show that the site is not very secure - there have been armed men and volunteers tramping around and going through the wreckage, so no matter what the outcome of the investigation might be, there will probably be allegations of evidence-tampering. There's been a lot of attention to the missile that supposedly brought this plane down. What do we know? Ukrainian officials say the missile was a Soviet and Russian type known as the SA-11 Buk missile system. A lot of the discussion has focused on where the paramilitaries would have gotten these weapons and how they would have been able to operate them well enough to hit a fast-moving target at 33,000 feet. The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.N. said that Ukrainian intelligence has videos and photos showing the rebels have at least two of these systems. The systems are very complex to operate. It takes a lot of training to use one effectively, so Ukrainian officials are also suggesting that Russian soldiers may have been assisting or manning the weapon. There was a lot of contradictory talk about the black boxes, the flight data and voice recorders from the plane. Do we know now who has them? It's unclear now who has them. But the one piece of news that came out was that Russia says it doesn't intend to take custody of the boxes and that they should be handed over to international investigators. That could be a way to pre-empt claims from Ukraine that Russia somehow manipulated the data to protect the paramilitaries.

Looting at jet crash scene may hamper investigation It's still unclear who will take the lead on the investigation into Malaysia Airlines flight 17. Meanwhile rescue workers appear unorganized and passenger belongings have been looted. NORTH OF GRABOVO, Ukraine - The black handbag lay on the field turning muddy from the rain. A beige wallet lay next to it, open, near credit cards and photographs carefully lined up next to each other on the wet grass, ordinary pictures of loved ones: son, daughter, father and mother. The scene was replicated across the field - camera holders missing cameras, wallets missing cash, cosmetics and other items scattered in random patterns after a jet disintegrated and fell from the sky. A day after a Malaysian airliner was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 aboard, twisted wreckage and mangled bodies remained uncollected as emergency personnel searched the site Friday. In some areas of this field, near the small town of Grabovo in a remote eastern Ukrainian farming region close to the Russian border, backpacks and other carry-on luggage were grouped together. It was clear that looters had opened and rifled through some of them. As Ukraine and Russia, along with the pro-Russian separatists who have taken control of the region, fight over who gets to manage the scene, the recovery operation has become chaotic, and the typical procedures used to aid the investigation into the crash have been compromised. Rain fell Friday afternoon over bodies that remained on the field, and they weren't covered up to protect them. Such scenes are normally cordoned off, but men randomly walked the area, finding an item or a limb, then staking the ground to mark the site with a stick that had a white piece of fabric twisted around it. Absent was the "grid" walk at such scenes, where organized teams in a line walk a grid pattern to make sure nothing is left uncovered. Also missing was any organized way of categorizing the debris - description, location, photo - that is standard procedure for a crime scene. Nor was there any effort to secure personal items, such as a Winnie the Pooh bear or a Minnie Mouse lunchbox, that belonged to victims so they could be returned to their families. Many of the dead have been identified through passports found at the scene, where some victims were miraculously intact. Others were too mangled or burned to be identifiable. Passengers strapped to their seats were found in contorted positions. Next to one young man was a watch separated from its strap. It's display showed 15:54. Residents said they were in shock over what happened. Some said they cried Thursday as they rushed out to help, only to realize they were helpless to save anyone. Several took photographs of the scene. Alexander Aleksandrovich and his teenage grandson, Cyril, said a part of the jet's body and the engine just missed their house and landed nearby in a charred pit. They attributed the miss to a large Orthodox Christian cross they erected on their land last year. "As my wife told me, (the plane) was heading towards (the house),'" Aleksandrovich said. "She came out of the town to see the plane coming. It started to fragment and crashed across the road. "It was by the grace of God we are still alive - what other kind of power could have pushed it aside so that it didn't fall on peaceful people. The cross protected us - we survived." Cyril said his father and mother had to be taken to the hospital because of exposure to the jet fuel's fumes, which is highly toxic. Though the world's focus is on the tragic end for 298 passengers, residents said the separatists' fight for autonomy from the national government in Kiev shouldn't get lost. "Remember, we are still fighting here," Aleksandrovich said. "Let's not forget about that."

Malaysia Airlines tragedy proves we need international investigative body BY ALAN DIEHL A rescue worker uses sticks to mark the location where bodies of victims have been found at the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner carrying 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in Grabove, in rebel-held east Ukraine, on Friday. President Barack Obama and members of the U.N. Security Council demanded a full, independent investigation into the apparent shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines jet. Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images While the facts are still emerging from the loss of MH17, it now appears highly unlikely that the missile crew intended to shoot down an airliner from a nonaligned country peacefully traversing Ukraine airspace. It is also clear from the earlier Malaysia Airlines MH370 disaster that a highly competent, independent, global accident investigation organization is now needed. Having spent decades investigating crashes for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force, as well as working with the International Civil Aviation Organization, I know that high visibility accidents, such as this one, often lead to important reforms. Hopefully, two seminal enhancements will emerge from this catastrophe: better training to prevent "human error" and the establishment of a United Nations Transportation Safety Board. This week's downing of the jumbo jet bears an uncanny resemblance to earlier disasters, including the 1983 downing of a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 by the Soviet Air Force over the Pacific, and the 1988 destruction of an Iranian Airlines Airbus 300 by a U.S. Navy missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf. Investigations of both accidents revealed that human error was the underlying cause, and such disasters were not limited to civilian airliners. In fact, the worse fratricide since Vietnam occurred when US Air Force jets shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters over Iraq in 1994. Even more tragic was the fact that training programs existed that might have prevented all three of these catastrophes. One such training program was first utilized by U.S. airlines and called Crew Resource Management. CRM was launched by an NTSB recommendation that I wrote after the tragic 1978 crash of a United Airlines DC8 in Portland, Oregon. By the mid-1980s, CRM was required by all major airlines in this country and it quickly spread around the globe. This training teaches pilots and others how to access risks, avoid the loss of situational awareness, improve interpersonal communication and coordination, and thereby results in enhanced collective judgment and teamwork. CRM training has been credited with helping to dramatically reduce airline accidents in recent decades. While CRM training was mandatory for airline pilots, it has also been successfully applied to many other professions, including nuclear power plant operators, air-traffic controllers, and emergency-room medical teams. In fact, after investigating the Black Hawk fratricides noted above, I recommended it for all U.S. military personnel who have to make dangerous, time-critical decisions based on imperfect information. Unfortunately, the Pentagon ignored this recommendation and other tragedies have followed, including the loss of Army Ranger Pat Tillman. It is now time to teach CRM training globally as was done for pilots. By doing so we could reduce human error, which is a cause in approximately 80 percent of accidents in all arenas. Another important potential enhancement is the need for a truly independent, highly competent, global accident investigation organization. The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization's current procedures that govern accident inquiries were written over a half-century ago. Many of these so-called ICAO Annex 13 protocols no longer make much sense. For example, establishing which country should lead the investigation based on things such as the "country of occurrence" and "country of manufacture" have become irrelevant today. Note that the Malaysia MH370 jetliner was probably in international waters, but per ICAO Annex 13 guidance, that country was responsible for leading the investigation. Unfortunately that government was a major shareholder in the airline itself, and many have accused them of duplicity, incompetence, and even intentionally ignoring potential problems. Furthermore, the "country of manufacture" is also confusing, because airliners are now manufactured by international consortiums, even if their headquarters are in cities like Chicago or Toulouse. Therefore, it is time to establish a "United Nations Transportation Safety Board," rather than relying on national organizations, because some of these organizations, especially those in developing or Third-World nations are totally inadequate to conduct such critical investigations. I am not suggesting that we need a large new bureaucracy at ICAO headquarters. This "UNTSB" could rely on existing organizations like the American NTSB, the British Air Accident Investigation Branch, the French Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses and other well-known and highly-effective civil aviation investigation organizations. The U.S. military safety centers and those of other nations should also be part of this mix when there is a need for their expertise or equipment. There are some precedents for this important change: The United Nations itself has recently announced that it will be re-investigating the crash that killed their secretary general, Dag Hammarskjold, in 1961, which is now regarded as a possible assassination. And I investigated another very high-profile crash that occurred in 1986, killing the president of Mozambique. The South African government in December 2012 announced it was going to reopen that investigation to establish whether it was an accident or assassination. This tragic crash was discussed in my book, and I have also requested that the United Nations be put in charge of that new inquiry. Alan Diehl is an aviation safety consultant who has worked with the NTSB, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force. He is the author of "Air Safety Investigators: Using Science to Save Lives -- One Crash at a Time."

Allianz, Atrium lead insurance coverage on downed Malaysian Airlines plane (Reuters) - Insurance on the Malaysian Airlines plane brought down over Ukraine, led by an Allianz S.E. unit for liability and Atrium Underwriting Group for war coverage, is likely to pay out relatively quickly if the cause of the crash is determined, but observers say settling insurance for the loss of 298 lives and other liability could be complex and lengthy. Malaysia Airlines said flight MH-17 disappeared at 1415 GMT as it flew over eastern Ukraine toward the Russian border, bound for Asia. Flight tracking data indicated it was cruising at 33,000 feet when it lost contact with air traffic controllers, apparently struck by a missile. Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, a division of Germany's Allianz, is the lead reinsurer covering the aircraft, which insurance broker Aon P.L.C. has valued at about $97.3 million. AGCS is also the lead liability reinsurer for Malaysian Airlines, the company said in a statement. Atrium Underwriting Group leads the war policy covering Malaysia Airlines, Barclays P.L.C. said. An Atrium spokesman declined to comment. It should be fairly easy for investigators to determine whether the plane was hit by a missile or blew up for some other reason, said Robert Cohn, an aviation attorney and partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington. "Then the interesting issue is who do you go after as the malefactors?" he said. "Are you going to sue a rebel?" Ukraine accused "terrorists" - militants fighting to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia - of shooting down the Boeing 777 with a Soviet-era SA-11 ground-to-air missile as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Leaders of the pro-Russian Donetsk People's Republic rebels denied any involvement, although around the same time their military commander said his forces had downed a Ukrainian transport plane. Insurance coverage complicated Which insurers are on the hook for losses, which are usually spread across a wide number of players, depends on whether the downing is considered to have been due to a hostile act. "(But) if reports that the plane was shot down are verified, the aircraft loss will be borne by the niche aviation war market, which has recently been pummeled by a series of losses," Barclays said in a research note. Fighting at the Tripoli Airport in Libya this week saw $200 million to $400 million in damages to aircraft, the bank said. Reinsurance cover for airline fleets is usually split between several of the sector's leading companies, which include Munich Reinsurance Co., Swiss Re Ltd. and Hannover Re S.E. Hannover Re said it shared some of the reinsurance coverage for the aircraft but declined to offer details. "In view of the high number of casualties, it would not be appropriate to release numbers now," a Hannover Re spokesman said. Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, declined to comment, as did second-largest Swiss Re. Willis Group Holdings P.L.C., reported by Bloomberg to have brokered the policy, confirmed that Malaysia Airlines was a client. In some ways, the investigation will mirror the search for the Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing in March, when Malaysia had jurisdiction and other countries assisted. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which often investigates air accidents overseas and must be invited to join, said it was still determining its possible involvement in probing the Ukraine loss. "We are communicating with other government agencies and evaluating what our role will be," the agency said in a statement. U.S. and European air regulators warned in April that airlines should avoid flying over the Crimean Peninsula and parts of Ukraine. However, some airlines were routinely flying over the northern part of Ukraine, said Mark Duell, vice president of operations at FlightAware.com, a flight-tracking website. Lufthansa A.G., Air India and Malaysia Airlines are among the airlines that have flown there, according to FlightAware's data. "It doesn't seem anyone's been avoiding Ukraine," Mr. Duell said. "I don't see airlines going over Crimea, but I don't see anyone avoiding the rest of Ukraine." However some international airlines, including Australia's Qantas Airways and Korea's two major carriers, said on Friday that they had already shifted routes to avoid Ukrainian air space due to the conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels. Mr. Cohn said he expected regulators to issue broader warnings about Ukraine airspace, and that airlines would be more cautious in the area even if regulators did not expand such warnings. China's civil aviation authorities on Friday ordered Chinese aircraft flying over Ukraine to avoid the country's eastern airspace, state news agency Xinhua reported. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration said U.S. airlines "have voluntarily agreed not to operate in the airspace near the Russian-Ukraine border." "The FAA is monitoring the situation to determine whether further guidance is necessary," the agency said. Several airlines, including Turkish Airlines, have since announced they would avoid Ukrainian airspace.