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| President Barack Obama speaks about the situation in Ukraine in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on Saturday (KST). /AP-Yonhap |
U.S. President Barack Obama said his government believes a surface-to-air missile fired from an east Ukraine area controlled by Russia-backed separatist rebels brought down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The plane crashed on Thursday (KST), killing all 298 people on board. Obama's remarks were the strongest public suggestions yet from the White House over who was responsible for the alleged attack.
The U.S. and Russia clashed at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia's envoy put the blame on Ukraine for its military attacks in eastern regions.
Obama called the attack an "outrage of unspeakable proportions" said he would make sure "the truth is out."
"We don't have time for propaganda," Obama said. "We don't have time for games."
Up to 20 international investigators from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reached the crash scene near the village of Grabovo on Saturday.
However, Swiss Ambassador to the OSCE Thomas Greminger told the BBC the team did not get full access and were stopped by "local illegal armed groups."
The doomed Boeing 777 was flying Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and was last detected by military satellites at 30,000 feet before it fell between Krasni Luch in Luhansk region and Shakhtarsk in the Donetsk region.
Latest figures released by Malaysia Airlines show the plane was carrying 189 Dutch nationals, 27 Australians, 44 Malaysians (including 15 crew), 12 Indonesians and 10 Britons, along with a number of other nationalities.
U.S. officials on Saturday said there was an American passenger among the dead, Quinn Lucas Schansman, a dual citizen of U.S. and the Netherlands.
