– Black boxes ‘intact’ –
Malaysia Airlines, reeling from its second disaster in only four months after flight MH370 went missing in the Indian Ocean, had to defend itself late Monday after confirming it had diverted a flight from Ukrainian to Syrian airspace.
“The Syrian airspace was not subject to restrictions,” the flag carrier said in a statement.
Malaysian experts on the ground in Ukraine said the black boxes were “intact with only minor damage.”
“We have not found the black boxes from flight MH370, so (we) are happy to be able to recover these,” said a member of the Malaysian team.
On the ground, the animosity between Ukraine’s warring sides was underlined by intense shelling which erupted in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, killing five and leaving 12 wounded. READ: Missile downed Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine, US says.
Obama put the onus to set the situation straight squarely on Russia, which he said has “direct influence over these separatists”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin must prove “that he supports a full and fair investigation,” Obama said.
The US president stressed that “the burden now is on Russia to insist that the separatists stop tampering with evidence, grant investigators who are already on the ground immediate, full, and unimpeded access to the crash site”.
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