The Lil' Devil's Confessions: Breaking News

Woke up at midnight with a breaking new that is all over Twitter and Facebook. MH17 that is scheduled for arrival at Kuala Lumpur International airport at 6.10 am local time from Amsterdam, was believed to have been shoot down by insurgents in the border of Russia and Ukraine. The jet was carrying 298 passengers with 15 crew members with 189 Dutch, 44 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, 9 British nationals, 4 Belgians, 4 Germans, 3 Filipinos, one Canadian and a New Zealander. Among the victims were 100+ of world leading AIDS researchers. They are heading to the AIDS 2014 conference in Melbourne on Sunday. Joep Lange, who researched the condition for more than 30 years and was considered a giant in the field, admired for his tireless advocacy for access to affordable AIDS drugs for HIV positive patients living in poor countries was one of the victims. 121 bodies have been recovered so far.

The jet crashed in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine where the Pro-Russian separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian security forces. According to Eurocontrol's information, the doomed plane was flying at 10,000 meters when it disappeared from radar screens. From the released news, Ukraine's government said that the jet was shot down in a 'terrorist act' while comments attributed to a pro-Russia rebel chief suggested his men may have downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by MISTAKE, believing it was a Ukrainian army transport plane. Well, to the men that shoot down the plane by mistake, I hope you guys know that that mistake took 295 innocent life's and has affected more than thousands of people all over the world. May the guilt hunt them for the rest of their lives, if they still have the conscience in them.

It is emotionally draining and devastating to deal with another tragedy as we as a nation have yet to even recover from MH370. 2014 has been a tragic year and to think that we're only half way through. I try to avoid social media as much as I can because to see the news of hundreds of innocent life's gone, it's a heart breaking. There's always a tingling sensation in me when I saw all those photos of the scene. Perhaps the tingling sensation is a part of my own mourning process. Too numb from it for teardrops to fall. I don't understand why it happen. Why do one need to shoot down a commercial flight? So far, there are no survival.

MAS said air traffic controllers lost contact with flight MH17 at 1415 GMT

as it flew over eastern Ukraine towards Russian border.

Nationalities of the victims

List of the crew members

Pictures of the scene

Info graphic on Boeing 777-200 and BUK 9K37

Source: Berita Harian

Details on MH17

Front page of The Times (18 July 2014)

Dated 19 July 2014

Front page of Utusan Malaysia 18 July 2014

Please stop blaming MAS. It's not like it's their fault. Malaysia Transport Minister, Liow Tiong Lai has denied that Malaysia Airlines was trying to save fuel when Flight MH17 took the route over south-eastern Ukraine. He even added that many other countries (airlines) are taking the same route. MH17's flight was approved by Eurocontrol, who are solely responsible for determining civil aircraft flight paths over European airspace. Eurocontrol is the air navigation service provider for Europe and is governed under ICAO rules. The route over Ukrainian airspace where the incident occurred is commonly used for Europe to Aisa flights. A flight from a different carrier was on the same route at the time of the MH17 incident, as were a number of other flights from other carriers in the days and weeks before. Eurocontrol maintains records of all flights across European airspace, including those across Ukraine.

In April, the International Civil Aviation Organization identified an area over the Crimean peninsula as risky. At no point did MH17 fly into, or request to fly into, this area. At all times, MH17 was in airspace approved by the ICAO. MH17 filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000ft throughout Ukrainian airspace. This is close to the ‘optimum’ altitude. However, an aircraft’s altitude in flight is determined by air traffic control on the ground. Upon entering Ukrainian airspace, MH17 was instructed by Ukrainian air traffic control to fly at 33,000ft.

Source: Malaysiakini

The latest update

It explains the 'mistake' thou. Taken from a source,“I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft - 15:44 Moscow time,”