Leaked audio clips reveal the moment Russian rebels realise they have shot down flight MH17, Ukrainian intelligence agencies claim.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plunged six miles from the sky and crashed into a field in a ball of flames, killing all 295 on board – including up to six Brits.
Ukrainian rebels quickly denied they were behind the tragedy, which was also feared to have killed 80 children.
But moments after the plane crashed near the separatist stronghold village of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, rebel commander Igor Strelkov boasted his forces had shot down a Ukrainian air force Antonov-26.
He tweeted: “We just hit down An-26. We warned you… do not fly in ‘our sky’.
“And here is the video confirmation of the ‘bird dropping’.”
The message was deleted after it emerged the downed plane was a passenger jet.
But a chilling video posted on Strelkov’s vk.com website showed a plume of smoke emerging from the horizon as three men discussed the crash. One says: “Just now the plane was hit.”
The second man replies in a happy voice: “All over, it is already over.”
The first man adds: “We are out now, watching, look at those black spots, these are the parts, flying, and it was a blast.”
Then the second man says: “They got it, they hit it. They shoot and hit it.” A third man, laughing, then remarks: “It was worth bringing this thing, wasn’t it?”
Two other Ukrainian military aircraft were shot down in the region in recent days.
Last night there were claims that the missile was fired from the village of Chornukhine, Luhansk Oblast, north east of Donetsk.
The Ukrainian secret service – the SBU – said it intercepted phone calls between Igor Bezler, a commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Vasili Geranin, a colonel in the intelligence department of the armed forces of the Russian Federation.
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