Peace hopes take a battering

The shooting down by missile last week over the Ukraine of a commercial passenger flight from Amsterdam international airport to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, with some of the passengers en route to Australia, is serious for the safety of international flights as the airline believed it was safe to fly on the usual route over the Ukraine and the plane was 1,000 feet above the danger zone.

Passengers on commercial flights are usually exempt from attack in war situations which have nothing to do with them, and if this were to happen again where a commercial flight were to be targeted, it would make global air travel more dangerous.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said there can be no hiding place within a UN member state for those who carried out the attack. Eighty of the 298 on board were children.