A passenger jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing everyone aboard. Around 100 leading AIDS researchers were on the plane.

A leaked tape reportedly shows pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine shot down the jetliner, thinking they had attacked a military transport plane.

This sort of thing is what happens in war. US drone attacks are called "surgical strikes", but they often do the military equivalent of amputating the wrong leg. A US ship shot down an Iranian jetliner, also by mistake. Israeli bombs in Gaza are supposedly aimed at "terrorists" but many hit schools, hospitals, wells and homes.

However, when Russia handed high altitude SAMs to rebels without rigid checklists, it made this sort of accident rather likely.

A reporter resigned from Russia Today to protest its absurd claims that Ukraine fired the missile.