Ukraine's security service on Thursday released audio of what it said contains intercepted phone calls made by pro-Russian rebels claiming responsibility for the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

Ukraine has accused pro-Russian separatists of staging the attack on MH17, in which all 298 passengers and cabin crew on board died.

The first phone call is allegedly between separatist leader Igor Bezler and Vasyl Mykolaiovych Geranin, a colonel serving Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate. Known as 'Bez', the leader reported to Geranin that they had shot down a plane.

The clip also contains another phone call allegedly between unidentified militants, when they realised they had brought down a civilian airliner.

The audio ended with a phone call between another pro-Russian militant and rebel leader Mykola Kozitsyn. The conversation centred on the identities of the passengers, who Kozitsyn alleged were spies brought into the warzone.

Another rebel leader Igor Girkin also boasted on vk.com, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, that they had shot down a plane. Believing the plane was an Antonov-26 plane belonging to the Ukrainian forces, Girkin wrote that "We did warn you — do not fly in our sky" and "no peaceful people were injured''.

The status update was later taken down after it became known that a civilian jet, instead of a military aircraft, had been brought down.

Flight MH17 came down four hours into its flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur, crashing into a field in a region of east Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

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