'This is an absolute disaster': What one reporter saw at the MH17 crash site

Ukraine-based journalist Noah Sneider has been among the first to arrive at the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, where it went down on Thursday, reportedly killing all 295 people aboard. Sneider has been tweeting from the scene, which he describes in horrifying terms:

At crash site of #MH17. Bodies everywhere, organs splayed out. Too gruesome to post photographs. This is an absolute disaster. #ukraine

— Noah Sneider (@NoahSneider) July 17, 2014

Firefighters putting out smoldering wreckage of #mh17. Everything burnt out, grass, plane, ppls minds. Impossible to comprehend... #ukraine

— Noah Sneider (@NoahSneider) July 17, 2014

Locals say everything exploded in the air, fell in pieces, both bodies and plane itself. Ppl thought they were being bombed. #ukraine #mh17

— Noah Sneider (@NoahSneider) July 17, 2014

"I've never seen anything like it," one local rebel fighter tells me. "You look down and see ears, fingers, bones." #ukraine #mh17

— Noah Sneider (@NoahSneider) July 17, 2014

That locals say the plane exploded mid-air is, if true, extremely significant as it would suggest that the plane was shot down.

US intelligence agencies seemed to confirm this on Thursday when they reported that they'd detected a surface-to-air missile fired at flight MH17, though they were unsure whether it had come from eastern Ukraine or from Russia.

Read here for everything we know — and don't know — about this story.

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