KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 — A Dutch national who was reportedly among the 295 passengers on board flight MH17 took a picture of the aircraft hours before it crashed over eastern Ukraine, according to a report by The Telegraph.

Cor Pan, snapped a picture of the plane from the departure lounge of the Amsterdam airport and captioned the image:  “If it disappears, this is what it looks like.”

Sufi Rahimi, a reporter for The Telegraph said that Cor Pan was from Volendam, Noord-Holland in the Netherlands.

“He describes himself as self-employed, and his Facebook profile says that he is in a relationship with Neeltje Tol. He was the co-owner of Neeltje’s Flowers,” said The Telegraph report. 

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has confirmed a notification from the Ukrainian air traffic control that it had lost contact with flight MH17 approximately 50km from the Russian-Ukrainian border. 

“Malaysia Airlines confirms it received notification from Ukrainian ATC that it had lost contact with flight MH17 at 1415 (GMT) at 30km from Tamak waypoint, approximately 50km from the Russia-Ukraine border,” the national carrier said in a short statement earlier. 

In a brief report on international wire agency Reuters tonight, Interfax was quoted saying the passenger airline had been shot down at an altitude of 10km above Ukraine.

Asked to confirm the report, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman told The Malay Mail Online in an SMS that “We are trying to get confirmation”.

A Ukrainian interior ministry official has said that pro-Russian militants are responsible for shooting down the Malaysian airliner, killing all 295 people aboard. 

The Boeing 777 came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, interior ministry official Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook, adding it was “shot down with a Buk anti-aircraft system by terrorists” - the term the Kiev government uses for militants seeking to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia. The dead were 280 passengers and 15 crew.

A rebel leader said Ukrainian forces shot the airliner down. Ukrainian official said their military was not involved.

Interfax-Ukraine quoted another Ukrainian official as saying the plane disappeared from radar when it was flying at 10,000m, a typical cruising altitude for airliners.

Ukraine has accused Russia of taking an active role in the four-month-old conflict in recent days and accused it earlier of shooting down a UkrainianSukhoi Su-25 fighter jet - an accusation that Moscow denied.

The military commander of the rebels, a Russian named Igor Strelkov, had written on his social media page shortly before the report of the airliner being downed that his forces had brought down an Antonov An-26 in the same area. It is a turboprop transport plane of a type used by Ukraine’s forces.

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