Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: Five unanswered questions

1. Who shot down the plane?
Only a full investigation can settle that. This much we know: Flight 17 was shot down using a surface-to-air missile in Ukrainian territory that's controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
Ukraine's government says it has "compelling evidence" that a Russian-supplied battery, manned by Russian operatives, fired the missile. The United States has also pointed the finger at the Russian-trained rebels.
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"We have a video showing a launcher moving back through a particular area there, out into Russia, with at least one missing missile on it," Secretary of State John Kerry said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
But Russia has denied any involvement. So have the rebels, who accuse the U

3. Why was the plane flying over a war zone?
Most airlines follow rules set by national civil aviation authorities and take the most direct route available, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The Malaysia Airlines flight left Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It flew over eastern Ukraine, which is a common route for international carriers.
Last week, Eurocontrol, the agency responsible for coordinating European airspace, said Ukrainian authorities had closed airspace in the region below 32,000 feet (about 9,750 meters), but it was open at the level Flight 17 was flying (33,000 feet).


[color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]MH17: What they left behind[/color]

[/color][color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]U.S. sees Russian role in shootdown[/color]

[/color][color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]Paying tribute to the lives lost on MH17[/color]


[/color][color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered[/color] "There's a lot of questions to be asked in a lot of different places," CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien said. "Why didn't government officials close off that airspace completely? 32,000 feet, that's a completely arbitrary number."

2. Why would anyone target a passenger plane?
If indeed the rebels are behind the attack, they may have mistaken Flight 17 for a Ukrainian military aircraft. In the past few months, the rebels have used surface-to-air missiles to bring down more than a dozen planes, including two transport aircraft, [color=rgb(0, 66, 118)] the U.S. Embassy in Kiev said [/color].
Shortly after the crash, Igor Strelkov, the self-proclaimed defense minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, claimed on social media that the rebels had shot down a military transport plane. Those posts were later deleted once it turned out the plane was a civilian aircraft.
"It has the earmarks of a mistaken identification of an aircraft that they may have believed was Ukrainian," Arizona Sen. John McCain told MSNBC.