MH17: Eyewitness Accounts of Horror and Confusion at Crash Site

Last Thursday, a flowered wheat field in eastern Ukraine became the scene of an unconceivable tragedy when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was brought down by a surface-to-air missile.

A week after the disaster, TIME reporter Simon Shuster and Getty photographer Brendan Hoffman – both on site within hours of the disaster – give an inside perspective of the aftermath of MH17’s crash.

From the challenges of photographing unimaginable scenes of sorrow on the ground, to the questions surrounding the men who took control of the site, Shuster and Hoffman paint a unique picture of the legacy of Flight MH17.