Flight carrying PM Modi was on same flight route as MH17

A flight carrying Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on the same flight route as the Malaysian Airlines MH17 plane that is believed to have been shot down, according to a report in The Hindu. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flight back to India, which took off from Frankfurt two hours before the crash and was in the same flight corridor, was rerouted”, the report said. “There was no danger to the PM’s plane, but obviously the area that they would have flown over would have been the same", the report quoted an aviation official as saying. [caption id=“attachment_1623935” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Associated Press[/caption] The Malaysia Airlines MH17 passenger plane crashed Thursday in Ukraine near the Russian border, with all the 280 passengers and 15 crew members on board reportedly having been killed. All 15 crew members are Malaysians. Jos Nijhuis, president and CEO of the Schiphol Airport Group, said: “We sympathize with the families who have been affected. We will do everything in our power to accommodate and support them as well as possible and support.” The airlines’ European head Huib Gorte said that the victims include 154 Dutch passengers, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians, 6 Britons, 4 Germans, 4 Belgians, 3 Philippines, one Canadian and 47 of yet unknown identities. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak demanded swift justice against those responsible if a Malaysian airliner that came down in Ukraine was found to have been shot down. Najib, reading out a statement at a news conference on Friday, said Malaysia had not been able to verify what caused the Boeing 777-200 to crash while on a flight from Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, but it had not made a distress call. But he said he had agreed in talks with U.S. President Barack Obama that investigators must get full access to the site of the crash. “The Ukrainian authorities believe that the plane was shot down,” Najib said in the statement. Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbot has laid the blame on ‘Russia’ backed rebels, showing that the West is determined to lay the blame where it feels it belongs. “This is a grim day for our country and it’s a grim day for our world.” He said MH17 was shot down, “it seems by Russia-backed rebels”. Meanwhile Putin said Ukraine bore responsibility for the downing of a passenger plane in the country’s east, saying it would not have happened if Kiev had not resumed a military campaign against separatists.