Ukraine’s security services produced what they said were two intercepted telephone conversations that they said showed rebels were responsible for downing a Malaysian airliner.

In the first call, the security services said, rebel commander Igor Bezler tells a Russian military intelligence officer that rebel forces shot down a plane Thursday.

In the second, two rebel fighters – one of them at the scene of the crash – say the rocket attack was carried out by a unit of insurgents about 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of the crash site. Neither recording could be independently verified.

One of the fighters, who states he is at the site of where the plane came to the ground, describes seeing scattered debris. He later describes finding the documents of somebody he identifies as an Indonesian national studying at “Thompson University.”

A rebel is also heard asking, “Any weapons there?”, to which another replies, “None at all. Civilian things, medical stuff, towels, toilet paper.”

Following is a video from the Ukrainian security service website that shows the conversation between rebel fighters:

The downing of a Malaysia ­Airlines jet over Ukraine has led to speculation that the same carrier’s missing flight MH370 may also have been blown out of the sky by a missile.

The missing airliner with 239 passengers and crew aboard was travelling from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing on March 8 when it lost contact with air traffic control.

No trace of it has been found since despite a huge search involving ships from a host of nations including the UK, which sent HMS Echo.

Malaysia Airlines was heavily criticised for its handling of the aftermath of the crash when distraught relatives were deliberately kept in the dark over developments during the frantic initial search.

An explosive book, Flight MH370: The Mystery, made the sensational claim that MH370 was accidentally shot down by US or Thai strike fighters as part of a training drill that went horribly wrong.

Written by British author Nigel Cawthorne, it puts forward the theory that the exercise was to involve mock warfare on land, water and in the air using live ammunition. One passage reads: “Say a participant accidentally shot down Flight MH370. Such things do happen. No one wants another Lockerbie, so those involved would have every reason to keep quiet about it.”

New Zealand oil rig worker Mike McKay has also suggested the plane was shot down shortly after it stopped communicating with air traffic controllers. He claims to have seen a burning plane crashing in the Gulf of Thailand.

Meanwhile conspiracy theorists have suggested the plane landed secretly at a US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Others maintain it was hijacked to Afghanistan.

Experts, however, are convinced the passengers and crew are most likely to have died from suffocation after a pressurisation failure while the aircraft flew on automatic pilot before crashing when it ran out of fuel.

The Australian Navy’s ship Ocean Shield, which carries a robot submarine, is continuing to scour the ocean floor for the plane’s black box which could reveal exactly what happened.

-Express UK