Ukrainian military spokesman says planes were brought down about 16 miles from site of Malaysia Airlines crash

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Pro-Russia rebels have shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets in eastern Ukraine just days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Ukrainian military spokesman has said.

"Two Sukhoi Ukrainian fighter jets have been shot down. The fate of the pilots is not known," a spokesman, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, said, adding that the planes had been brought down about 16 miles (25km) from the MH17 crash site.

A second military spokesman, however, said insurgent rocket fire had brought the jets down at a different location. The two pilots managed to parachute out, he said, giving no further details about their condition.

"Today in the south of the Lugansk region close to the village of Dmytrivka, pro-Russia fighters shot two Su-25 jets from a missile system," the spokesman Vladislav Seleznev said.

"The pilots took evasive action … but the planes were hit," he said.

A spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said its fighters had shot down the two aircraft. An AFP crew trying to reach the scene was turned back by rebels, who fired shots near their car about six miles from Dmytrivka.

The downing of the fighter jets comes just six days after the insurgents were accused of shooting down the Malaysian passenger plane using a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people on board.

Pro-Russia rebels battling government troops in the east had previously taken out a string of Ukrainian military aircraft during the conflict. Rebels have denied that they downed flight MH17, accusing the Ukrainian military of being responsible.

The latest incident came after a ceasefire was declared by both sides in the immediate vicinity of the Boeing 777 crash site, where Malaysian experts and international monitors were examining the wreckage on Wednesday.

Earlier, the first 40 bodies recovered from MH17 were flown out of the government-held city of Kharkiv to Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where they were met by bereaved families and members of the Dutch royal family.