Confession: 'We shot down MH17 thinking it was Ukrainian cargo plane'

A pro-Russian unnamed rebel soldier admitted separatists shot down MH17 by accident.

17:30 25 July 2014

A pro-Russian separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine has made a bold admission that rebel forces shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 after it was mistaken for a government cargo plane. He said that he only realised the deadly mistake when he came across the bodies of children rather than military crew.

Talking to a reporter for Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, the rebel, who used to work as miner before joining pro-Russian separatists, said: 'We shot down a Kiev plane, our superiors told us. We thought we were looking for baled-out Ukrainian pilots but instead we found dead civilians.’

'All those poor people with baggage that certainly wasn’t military... I was looking for a parachute and found the body of a little girl,' he added.

His admission is in stark contrast to other pro-Russian forces in the area who remain insistent that the plane was shot down by government troops.

The 31-year-old fighter refused to be named but agreed to pose for photographs while standing alongside one of the refrigerated train carriages containing the bodies of 200 MH17 victims. He is understood to be from the Oplot combat unit, which operates in the area around the Hrabove crash site at the time the plane was shot down.