A Malaysian plane has been shot down in the Ukraine.

[WeAreEternal]

The flight mh17 from Amsterdam to kuala lumpor with 295 people on board, it was a boing 777.
It was shot down with a buk ground to air missile.
They say there are no survivors.

It's awful.

but the rise of social media as well as press' usual desire for the dramatic will make it more difficult

I agree. I would say to people to look at what is said. And more to the point what ISN'T said over the next few days.

For example the thing I find most troubling about the Putin statement, is that he does not admit Russian involvement but nor does he deny it either. And at the same time he puts blame on Ukraine and encourages his military to give all assistance to the task of solving the mystery.

I know this sounds awful, but I hope that it comes out that some of those unknown nationality passengers turn out to be Chinese, as the influence of the Chinese, could be a very stabilising position, if they too put pressure on Russia.

I'm awake thanks.

But off to bed in a minute.

I saw the breaking news of this flight flash up on my screen at work today as I watched passengers board their flights. I felt and still do feel sick to the core.

The 17th July was already a sad day for aviation following the crashes of TWA800 and TAM3054, but the possible shooting down of an innocent passenger flight is beyond terrible. For the sake of the victims, family and friends, I hope the truth is discovered.

It's utterly grim, isn't it, Red, to find ourselves placing bets on the devastating individual tragedies here - because of our fear of the larger tragedy?

CNN has an interview with a defense expert saying he doesn't think the rebels could be responsible as it would have taken quite sophisticated weaponry and training. Basically he's saying he would surmise it was either the Ukrainian military or the Russian military.

Awful though it is, I hope it was the former. It's the outcome least likely to lead to escalation.

My neighbour flew Air Malaysia on his holiday 3 weeks ago, he came back on Tuesday

My mother flew Air Malaysia 2 weeks ago, she flies back on tuesday

My mothers husband flew Air Malaysia last week, he flies back on Tuesday

It could have been any of them.

I feel ill.

Passenger number has been revised up to 298, the additional 3 were infants without their own seats.

The aircraft itself was apparently flown for the very first time on 17th July 1997, so it was 17 years to the day from its first flight to its last (as MH17)

That makes me so sad and angry

Lilka That's odd.

A real tragedy has occurred but FFS some of you are getting over dramatic. I flew in that airspace today it could have been me but so could thousands of plane, rail, car crashes. I was much closer to being in the Moscow Metro Crash which I am sure is keeping Putin rather busy still.

At the moment a proper investigation needs to take place and there is some seriously irresponsible reporting going on which is further whipping up hysteria. Even if the black boxes get handed to Russia it does not mean that a cover up will happen, people are fucking deluded if they think Russia will just say they contain X and everyone will have to put with it. There will be a proper investigation and many countries will be involved. I don't like Putin but he is not thick, any fool could see that the finger was going to be pointed straight in Russia's direction. Finger pointing and hysteria is not fucking helpful what we need now is cold hard facts.

Shooting down passenger plans whilst rare is not unheard of, Ukraine has done it at least twice as has the US. It is not necessarily a game changer especially when a plane is being flown in a conflict zone.

The Ukraine crisis is not solely the fault of Russia and anyone who disagrees needs to give their heads a fucking seeing to. There is a far wider situation with blame on all sides, that needs to be addressed rather than attempting to make Russia the sole bad guy. I am not a Putin fan and certainly not a fucking apologist, but we need to look at things rationally and honestly. Personally I think it'll be the west far more likely to trigger WW3 than Russia. Russia has always had a large proportion of the worlds nukes pointed firmly in its direction, so what would it achieve other than total annihilation?

Certain people are angry at Malaysia (for PM Matathir Mohamed's rantings a few years ago and the general support for those among his population) and Russia (for Putin's heavy handedness with some oligarchs). Would make perfect sense to try and kill two birds with one stone and distract world's attention from other events at same time.

Like the other flight, something is fishy.

I can't sleep for thinking about this. The terror they must have felt. The heartbreak if they knew they were going to die. The mums tying desperately to keep their babies calm.

It's so fucking cruel.

I pray that the plane immediately exploded and no one onboard knew what was happening. So many children.... apparently 15 AIDS experts from Australia. Just such a waste of life.

Could this have been an error - a horrendous, tragic - error by the separatists? It sounds like their initial communications thought they had brought down a Ukraine transport plane. It doesn't sound like they realised it was a civilian plane and many airlines were ready avoiding that airspace as it was known the more sophisticated missiles could reach 33,000 feet.

I'm not saying this makes anything remotely better, but if we can understand the whys, it might avoid catastrophic repercussions.

The site mogilev.byhas lot of links to youtube videos by seperatists. Just looking at some of the extra stuff that has been posted in the past few days by some of these Youtube users (so not on the mogilev site but got onto these users by opening up the links in Youtube and then looking for their other videos), I defintely think they knew something big was in the works.

It's really scary what is happening over there :(

But the separatists aren't stupid. They realise that they will not receive any international support if they bring down a civilian plane. There is worldwide revulsion.

ICanHearYou it's got nothing to doing with flying with Air Malaysia, it's to do with flying over Ukranian airspace!

dinner yes, although it sounds like Malaysian Airlines should not really have been flying over the Ukraine at all.

There was an "expert" on BBC Today programme a while ago who said that all of the information is "circumstantial" but that it is increasingly looking like it may have been a mistake by separatists.

Expert mentioned twitter chatter and tweets and how Russian separatist leader had tweeted about downing a Ukrainian Antonov transport plane and mentioned twitter chatter of about a month ago which said that separatists had captured some of these missile systems from the Ukrainians. Expert then said that the separatists woud not have been able to use these missiles and would have needed the help of Russian military to be able to use them and that we know that Russian military are in that region. Expert reiterated that evidence is "circumstantial".

BBC presenter then asked the obvious question, if Russian experts were helping with missiles then why would they make mistake of hitting an airliner flying at 33000 feet.

Expert paused and then said that it may be that the missiles were being used by peope who were not fully trained in their use.

Morning all.

Waking up to the news again this morning, DP stayed up most of the night watching it.

They have confirmed it was definitely shot down by a ground to air missile.

And they have updated the passanger nationalities.

298 aboard.

154 Dutch
43 malyasian (including the 15 crew and 2 infants)
27 Australian
12 Indonesian
9 British
4 German
4 Belgian
3 Philipino
1 Canadian

41 are still unconfirmed.

They are saying a substantial number of the passengers were on their way to Australia for an aids conference.

The plane crashed 25 miles from the Russian border.

The second flight recorder has be recovered by the rescuers.

I got such a fright when I heard this... My cousin and his wife live in Kuala Lumpur with their younger son, their older boy is in uni in the Netherlands and they all regularly fly this route, thank God none of them were on board..

Above video is very disturbing so please view with caution but how is it that the passports were able to survive so pristinely? They show the passports of a couple of kids :(

A Ukrainian spokesman on BBC Today programme says that Russian separatists have not captured any Ukrainian missile systems. So presumably some of this twitter chatter is not as reliable as being suggested by some media sources and experts.

Ukrainian spokesman says that the Ukrainians control all of these missile systems and the only other people who control them are the Russian military.

We can see clearly from this video that the crash scene is a free for all. People wondering all over it, collecting passports, perhaps looking through luggage judging from the film.
FFS this is a crime scene evidence is unsecured and being tampered with. Its upsetting enough but to see people casually walking around and looking through things is simple dreadful.

Why are so many passenger nationalities still unreleased? The manifest would have been very clear and available immediately. Are they Chinese?