Everything We Know About the Malaysia Plane Crash

A Malaysia airlines plane MH17,  full of around 300 people went down over Eastern Ukraine on Thursday. The website for the airline reads: MH17 Flight Incident: Our thoughts and prayers are with those on board flight MH17, as well as their families and loved ones.

Reports say that a missile hit the plane, causing it to explode. However there are no firm details yet.

This is everything we know so far bout the crash of Malaysia airlines flight MH17:

According to Buzzfeed.com the plane contained one American citizen. "The plane is believed to have been shot down by pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, according to preliminary intelligence assessments reported by CNN. Intercepted audio purportedly of a conversation between separatists regarding the plane shows that they thought they were shooting down something else and were surprised to find they had downed a civilian plane," the website reported.

Flight MH17 started out in Amsterdam and was headed to Kuala Lumpur.  

Although there are four people who have not been identified, a majority of the passengers were from the Netherlands. The list of nationalities of the victims is as followers, according to the Malaysia Airlines website: 189 Netherlands, 44 Malaysia, 27 Australia, 12 Indonensia, nine UK, four Belgium, four Germany, three Philippines, one Canada, and one New Zealand. 

In a statement, the airline said there was no reason to think the area was dangerous based on reports they had received.

"MH17's flight plan was approved by Eurocontrol, who are solely responsible for determining civil aircraft flight paths over European airspace. Eurocontrol is the air navigation service provider for Europe and is governed under ICAO rules.

The route over Ukrainian airspace where the incident occurred is commonly used for Europe to Asia flights. A flight from a different carrier was on the same route at the time of the MH17 incident, as were a number of other flights from other carriers in the days and weeks before. Eurocontrol maintains records of all flights across European airspace, including those across Ukraine.

In April, the International Civil Aviation Organization identified an area over the Crimean peninsula as risky. At no point did MH17 fly into, or request to fly into, this area. At all times, MH17 was in airspace approved by the ICAO."

The airline won't say what happened, but will avoid the area. "Following this incident, Malaysia Airlines now avoids Ukrainian airspace entirely, flying further south over Turkey," the airline said in the statement.