WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – President Barack Obama said Thursday that the passenger plane downed over Ukraine “looks like it may be a terrible tragedy” and his top priority is finding out whether American citizens were on board.
Obama said he’s directed his aides to stay in close contact with Ukrainian officials and offer U.S. help to determine what caused the crash. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the downing of the Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 295 people an act of terrorism.
An Associated Press journalist counted at least 22 bodies at the crash site about 25 miles from the Russian border, where government and pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting.
Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on his Facebook page that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.
Obama press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama was on a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin when news of the downed plane broke. Earnest and the Kremlin said Putin mentioned those early reports in the call, but provided no details of what the two leaders said about it.