| "...In some areas backpacks and other cabin luggage are grouped together, camera holders missing cameras, wallets missing cash, cosmetics and other items scattered, left in such a way as to suggest that looters had opened and rifled through some of them.Several passengers remain strapped in their seats, lying in twisted positions. Beside such a passenger, a young-looking man lying sideways, is a wristwatch next to his hand, separated from its strap. It shows 15:54, possibly the time the missile hit the plane or it hit the ground.It's a very grim sight out there. So many bodies are beyond recognition, then there are one or two with barely a scratch and others just bones..."
Read the whole report - here on the SMH
Reuters |
ROZSYPNE, Ukraine - First came the loud explosion that made buildings rattle: then it started raining bodies. One of the corpses fell through the rickety roof of Irina Tipunova's house in this sleepy village, just after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 exploded high over eastern Ukraine. "There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle. Then objects started falling out of the sky," the 65-year-old retiree said in front of her gray brick home. "And then I heard a roar and she landed in the kitchen, the roof was broken," she said, showing the gaping hole made by the body when it came through the ceiling.
The dead woman's naked body was still lying inside the house, next to a bed. About 330 feet from Tipunova's home, dozens more dead bodies lay in the wheat fields where the airliner came down on Thursday, killing all 298 people on board. Another local resident in her 20s said she ran outside after hearing the plane explode. "I opened the door and I saw people falling. One fell in my vegetable patch," she said. Chunks of metal, pieces of luggage and other debris came crashing down to the ground in this agricultural area about 25 miles from the border with Russia.
Read the whole story - here on NBC News
But RMIT aerospace engineering academic, Reece Clothier, said the Buk system did not have the technology to determine if it the plane was military or civilian.
“The Buk system is radar guided but at the end of the day the missile doesn't know the difference between a military and a civil aircraft, more advanced systems do," Dr Clothier said.Robert Pape, an expert in international security affairs at the University of Chicago, said the SA-11 travels at close to 5000km/h.‘They are designed to shoot down fighter jets that are going twice the speed of sound,’’ he said.‘To shoot down a commercial airliner lumbering at 600 miles an hour (1000km) and can’t move is a piece of cake.’
Read the story on Brisbane Times
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