Another day, another tragedy

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday, say American intelligence, while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The plane was carrying 298 people and had taken the usual daily route, flying at least 300m above the 9,700m limit over Ukrainian airspace. 

MAS said air traffic controllers lost contact with flight MH-17 at 1415 GMT as it flew over eastern Ukraine towards the Russian border, bound for Asia with 280 passengers and 15 crew aboard. Flight tracking data indicated it was at its cruising altitude of 10,000 metres when it disappeared.

The unofficial list of the MH17 flight manifest states that 20 Malaysians and two infants were on board the plane that was reportedly shot down by insurgents near the Russian-Ukrainian border.

The highest number of passengers are from Netherlands with 143 passengers. Australia comes in second with 27 passengers.

There were 11 Indonesian passengers and one infant on-board the ill-fated flight. Britain has six passengers, France and Germany have four each, Belgium have three and Canada one.

Nationalities of the other 58 passengers were not stated in the list. 15 MAS crew members were on the plane.

MH17 was brought down over eastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard and sharply raising the stakes in a conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels in which Russia and the West back opposing sides.

The scale of the disaster affecting scores of foreigners could prove a turning point for international pressure to resolve a crisis that has claimed hundreds of lives in Ukraine since pro-Western protests toppled the Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February and Russia annexed Crimea a month later.

New allegations that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by militants have surfaced, with a recording of an alleged conversation between Russian military intelligence officers and members of terrorist groups serving as “proof”, a Ukraine English daily reports.

In the conversation allegedly intercepted and released by the Ukraine’s security agency (SBU), a militant notes the plane is “100% civilian”.

The “conversation” translated by Ukraine'sThe Kyiv Post has one Igor Bezler – a commander of the self-styled separatist Donetsk People's Republic – conversing with someone believed to be a colonel with the Russian Armed Forces, Vasili Geranin.

Bezler says, “We have just shot down a plane,” and Vasili responds “Pilots, where are the pilots?”

Later two militants are heard discussing the attack, with one saying the aircraft “fell apart in the air”.

“We have found the first fatality,” he says later, “a civilian.

“In short, it was a 100% passenger aircraft.”

He notes the debris fell “right into the yards of homes”, and says there was nothing left except bodies, seats, civilian items like “medical stuff, towels, toilet paper”.

The militant later says, “Regarding the plane shot down in the area of Snizhne-Torez. “It’s a civilian one. Fell down near Grabove. There are lots of corpses of women and children. The Cossacks are out there looking at all this.

“They say on TV it’s an AN-26 transport plane, but they say it’s written Malaysia Airlines on the plane. What was it doing on Ukraine’s territory?

A man alleged to be a militant commander responds, “That means they were carrying spies. They shouldn’t be flying. There is a war going on.”

Despite the shooting down of several Ukrainian military aircraft in the area in recent months, including two this week, and renewed accusations from Kiev that Russian forces were taking a direct part, international air lanes had remained open.

- the star