11.59am BST

What we know so far:

Death toll

Authorities have updated the death toll to 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, near the Russian border, to include three infants not counted earlier.

That number includes people from: Netherlands 173, Malaysia 44, Australia 27, Indonesia 12 (including 1 infant), United Kingdom 9, Germany 4, Belgium 4, Philippines 3, Canada 1, New Zealand 1. There are still 20 unverified nationalities.

A number of the passengers were on their way to an international Aids conference in Melbourne, Australia. Names have not been confirmed but it is believed leading HIV/Aids researchers are among the dead. Malaysia Airlines is still contacting the next of kin of the deceased passengers but said in statement it would release the passenger manifest when it had finished.

British victims



Four British men have been named as victims of the crash.



Glenn Thomas, a media officer with the World Health Organisation, was described as a "wonderful person and a great professional" by colleagues.

John Alder and Liam Sweeney were on their way to watch Newcastle United play in a pre-season tour in New Zealand, according to fans site NUFC.com

A fourth British victim was named as Richard Mayne, a student from Leeds.

World reaction

The United States stopped short of directly blaming Russia for the plane’s destruction but criticised Russian arming of rebels in Ukraine and called for an immediate ceasefire. A US official said intelligence authorities believed the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile and were still working on whether it came from the Russian or Ukrainian side of the border.

The former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton however went further and said there were indications Russian-backed militia were to blame. TheAustralian prime minister, Tony Abbott, said it appeared the plane was shot down by Russian-backed rebels.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Ukraine bore responsibility for the crash, according to a Kremlin statement issued early on Friday, but he did not accuse Ukraine of shooting the plane down. "This tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the military actions had not been renewed in south-east Ukraine. And, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy."

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, called the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, to express his condolences and to invite Dutch experts to assist in the investigation. The Malaysian PM, Najib Razak, said the government of Ukraine had pledged to him a full and independent investigation. He called it “a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia”, referring to the earlier disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The United Nations security council is to hold an emergency meeting on the Ukraine crisis. A UK-drafted statement calls for “a full, thorough and independent international investigation” into what caused the crash and stresses the need for “all parties to grant immediate access by investigators to the crash site to determine the cause of the incident".



The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, earlier expressed his condolences and said there was “clearly a need for a full and transparent international investigation”.

Crash site

Ukrainian emergency workers have found the plane's black box flight recorder, AFP has reported. It was earlier believed the recorder had been taken by pro-Russia separatists in the area.

Rescue workers, police officers and even off-duty coal miners are combing a sprawling area in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border.

Harriet Salem at the crash site in Grabovo described it as "even more horrific in daylight. Firefighters fan out across fields marking sites of body parts with poles & white ribbons." Immediately after the crash, she said,

A strong smell of aviation fuel and burnt rubber hung in the air as dozens of pro-Russia separatist fighters milled around to control access to the area in which workers from the emergency services were sifting through the wreckage. Some 10 fire engines remained on the scene as night fell after rushing there to extinguish the many blazes sparked by the crash.

Airspace

Air safety experts have criticised Malaysia Airlines for flying over Ukraine airspace but the company maintains that the flight path was deemed safe to travel by civil aviation authorities.

The plane was traveling 1,000ft above the no-fly zone. Other airlines have said they either began avoiding the airspace above the troubled region several months ago, or have now joined Malaysia Airlines in diverting all aircraft away from it.

Many airlines avoided Ukraine immediately after the crash, as the flight data map shows below, and Ukraine on Friday closed airspace over the east of the country.

Audio footage

Audio was being circulated on social media, apparently released by Ukrainian security services, purporting to be an intercepted conversation of pro-Russia rebels confirming they had shot down a civilian jet.



The conversation is apparently between a group leader and his superior and suggests that they initially thought they had brought down a military aircraft but later realised their error.

The group leader, "Demon", tells his boss: "A plane has just been shot down. [It was] 'Miner's' group. It crashed outside Enakievo. Our men went to search for and photograph it. It's smouldering."

After his men apparently inspected the crash site, Demon reports back. "Cossacks from the Chernunkhino checkpoint shot down the plane. The plane disintegrated in mid-air … they found the first body. It's a civilian."

He carries on: "I mean. It's definitely a civilian aircraft."