ALMOST a week after the downing of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, U.S. officials still can’t say they’re certain who did it and whether Russia was involved.

    Three American intelligence officials who briefed reporters Tuesday said U.S. technical intelligence and overhead satellite images bolster the case that a surface-to-air missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down the civilian plane.

    U.S. intelligence followed “this specific missile” as it was fired from “a geographic area” controlled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, said an official, who requested anonymity. It followed the near-vertical flight path characteristic of an SA-11 launch.

    All three, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence findings, stopped short of claiming Russia played a direct role.

    The story of the airline tragedy that is unfolding for Russians differs starkly from the one that people are following in the West.

    As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told American TV viewers that rebels shot down the plane with Russian weaponry, Russians were being fed a diet of scenarios about forces in Ukraine conspiring to commit an atrocity in the skies.

    State-owned Rossiya TV pinned blame on Kiev by saying the rebels did not own any Buk launcher, while Ukraine recently deployed a Buk launcher to the area.

    Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia’s most-read tabloid, claimed that Ukrainian air traffic controllers redirected the Malaysian Airlines plane to fly directly over the conflict zone, publishing pictures from flight-tracking websites that appeared to show fluctuations in the plane’s route.

    Russia media have suggested that Ukrainian authorities orchestrated the downing to make it look like a rebel attack, in hopes it would be the catalyst for luring Western powers into military intervention.

    Meanwhile, Britain has agreed to aid in the analysis of data retrieved from two black boxes that were salvaged from the downed flight. British Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday that investigators from the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which is responsible for determining the circumstances and causes of civil aircraft accidents, will recover the information for “international analysis.”

    The first plane carrying bodies from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 yesterday left eastern Ukraine for the Netherlands following a somber ceremony.

    Grieving families and Dutch royals were due to receive the bodies as flags fly at half mast on a day of mourning across the nation, which lost 193 citizens in the flight.

    (SD-Agencies)