A Malaysia Airlines passenger plane was reportedly shot down in Ukraine near the Russian border Thursday.

The Boeing 777 had 280 passengers and 15 crew members, Interfax reported citing an an aviation industry source.

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister, said on Facebook that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.

It came down just 20 miles short of entering Russian airspace near the town of Shakhtyorsk, in an area where the Ukrainian government has been fighting pro-Russian rebels.

It "began to drop, afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory," a unidentified source told Reuters.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk ordered an investigation into what he called an "airplane catastrophe."

Flight Aware shows the flight was heading from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the main international airport in the Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur International Airport outside Kuala Lumpur, the most populous city of Malaysia.

The flight reportedly departed at 12:14 a.m. local time.

The crash comes a little more than four months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 lost contact with air traffic control less than an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The aircraft, also a Boeing 777, was carrying 227 passengers and 12 Malaysian crew members.

The airline issued a public statement an hour after the flight was expected to arrive in China.

The subsequent search efforts, which involved multiple governments, expanded to more than 60,000 square miles and soared to become the most expensive in history.

Malaysia Airlines confirmed it lost contact with the flight.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/malaysian-airlines-plane-crashes-ukraine-russian-border-article-1.1870413