Intense battles continue to rage in eastern Ukrai

Intense battles continue to rage in eastern Ukraine

View Video: Two Ukrainian warplanes were shot down Wednesday by pro-Russian rebels, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. The footage is described as showing pro-Russian rebels examining the wreckage near the Ukraine-Russia border. ( / Инфо корпус)

Michael Birnbaum, Carol Morello 
7:42 AM

DONETSK, Ukraine — Intense fighting continued Thursday in eastern Ukraine, a day after separatists fighting the Kiev government claimed responsibility for shooting down two warplanes near where a passenger airliner crashed last week after being struck by a missile.

Artillery explosions could be heard around Donetsk on Thursday, and the most intense fighting appeared to be coming from a contested area near the city’s airport. Despite the clashes, Australia’s leader said Thursday that he was readying a policing team of 50 officers who he hopes will join an eventual United Nations mission to secure the airliner’s crash site, which is 40 about miles east of Donetsk.

The attack on the warplanes came just six days after the Malaysia Airlines disaster, which has drawn international outrage and showcased the advanced firepower that apparently is available on the ground in the region. The Ukrainian military said Wednesday that the two Sukhoi Su-25 strike aircraft were flying at nearly 17,000 feet — an altitude that is out of the reach of the shoulder-fired missiles that the rebels said they had used to down the jets. Neither the government’s nor the rebels’ claims could be verified.

GALLERY

View Photo Gallery: Picking up the pieces from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: As volunteers were combing the crash site for bodies and debris, friends and family members were trying to cope with their loss.

Ukraine has accused Russia of supplying fresh firepower to rebels over the porous border between the two countries in recent days, even as international attention has focused on a possible Russian role in the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Although the details of Wednesday’s incident remained unclear, it was a sign that the rebels may still be able to inflict significant damage on the Ukrainian military, whose major advantage over its rivals is in the air.

Countries whose citizens were among the 298 people killed in the crash of Flight 17 began to discuss how to secure and investigate the debris site, which has been left almost completely unguarded in recent days.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday that he has sent 50 police officers to London to prepare for a potential U.N. mission that would deploy at the final resting place of the Boeing 777.

“We are ready to deploy Australian police to Ukraine to help secure the site as part of an international team under United Nations authority,” Abbott said in Canberra, the Associated Press reported.

The pilots of the two Su-25 jets, which were among four planes that were fired upon as they were returning from a mission near the Russian border, are thought to have bailed out over rebel-held territory. Their conditions and whereabouts were unknown, and both the rebels and the government said they had initiated search missions.

“We shot them down with MANPADS,” said rebel spokesman Sergey Kavtaradze, referring to shoulder-fired missiles that can reach a limited altitude.

Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told reporters in Kiev that the planes were flying too high to be hit by such a weapon.

“It can be reached only by heavy missile complexes,” he said.

Lysenko alleged that the missiles that hit the two planes were fired from Russian territory.

“They were shot down very professionally. The terrorists do not have such professionals,” he said in reference to the pro-Russian rebels.

Photos that have emerged since the Flight 17 crash last Thursday suggest that Buk missile launchers that apparently were in the rebels’ possession — and one of which Ukraine said was used to down the jetliner — have been transported to Russia. But U.S. officials have said that tanks, rocket launchers and other arms continue to flow into Ukraine from Russia.

The warplanes were shot down as the first 40 bodies of Flight 17 victims were en route to the Netherlands, where they are to be identified through DNA testing.

The Wednesday crashes in the vicinity of the Flight 17 site — about 25 miles south of its perimeter — provided an eerie reminder that the international shock over a missile strike on a passenger airliner has done little to deter the rebels from continuing to shoot down aircraft. It may even have given them some latitude, because commercial airliners now avoid flight paths over eastern Ukraine.