THE world mourns the tragic death of 298 people on board of the Malaysian airlines flight MH17 as pro-Russian rebels downed it from Ukrainian airspace as it was en-route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam on Thursday night. Malaysian airline has already suffered a tragedy as its MH370 plane disappeared without a trace in last March. Though the US and its allies and Russia are engaged in trading blame with each other for shooting down the civilians’ flight, the world condemns the criminal activity and urge the states concerned to give compensation to the victims’ families following an international investigation.
Ukrainian government and pro-Russian insurgents traded blame for the disaster, with comments attributed to a rebel commander suggesting his men may have downed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 by mistake, believing it was a Ukrainian army transport plane. The European air traffic control body, Eurocontrol, said Ukrainian authorities had banned aircraft from flying at 32,000ft or below and the doomed aircraft had been cruising above that, at 33,000ft – however this apparently still left it within range of the sophisticated surface-to-air weaponry that pro-Russia forces have been using recently to target Ukrainian military aircraft.
There was no sign of survivor at the crash site near the rebel-held town of Shaktarsk in the Donetsk region, where an AFP reporter saw dozens of severely mutilated corpses strewn through the smouldering wreck of the decimated airliner. There were 27 Australians on board the plane, along with 173 Dutch nationals, 44 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians, nine passengers believed to be from the UK, four each from Germany and Belgium, three from the Philippines, one Canadian and one from New Zealand. The nationalities of 39 passengers have not yet been verified.
The US President Barack Obama marked the plane crash as a “terrible tragedy”; British Prime Minister David Cameron twitted: “I’m shocked and saddened by the Malaysian air disaster, ” while the Australian Premier Tony Abbott called on Russia to explain the disaster as it “now seems certain it’s been brought down by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile”.
Malaysian President Najib Razak said the government of Ukraine had pledged a full and independent investigation and would negotiate with rebels to ensure a humanitarian corridor to the crash site, mentioning that any wrong-doers must be held responsible. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian military and civilian agencies to co-operate with any investigation denying any responsibility for this awful tragedy. The UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon stressed the need for an international investigation and expressed his condolences to the victims’ families.
The tragedy grieved the world which is already in mourning due to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. We suspect aeronautical problems or mechanical problems of the Boeing made plane as the airlines earlier twitted that they lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. We say the lives of innocent civilians is not a matter of joke and should not be a subject of tension between the world powers. And the Malaysian airlines authority should also not skip their responsibility.
