"You get this sick feeling in the pit of your stomach... We started getting butterflies. Your heartbeat starts going.' Barry Sim said of his reaction after he heard the plane he desperately wanted to board was shot down.
His wife said; 'There must have been someone watching over us and saying "you must not get on that flight".' The couple later cancelled their flight with KLM after the women refused to fly.
Meanwhile U.S intelligence has confirmed that the plane was shot down by pro-Russian separatists who mistook the jetliner for a Ukraine military plane. And it is a Russian-made weapon.
Continue to read a transcript of conversations between Russian military intelligence and Ukrainian separatists that were intercepted by Ukraine’s Secret Service moments after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down...
A view of what is believed to be a BUK surface-to-air missile battery being driven along a path on July 17in Torez, Ukraine just two hours before the plane was shot down...
The first exchange is between one Igor Bezler (pictured above), identified as Russian intelligence, and Vasili Geranin, a colonel in the Russian Federation separatist force.
Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. Group Minera. It fell down beyond Yenakievo (Donetsk Oblast).
Vasili Geranin: Pilots. Where are the pilots?
Bezler: Gone to search for and photograph the plane. It’s smoking.
Geranin: How many minutes ago?
Bezler: About 30 minutes ago.
This is followed by a subsequent conversation between two separatist rebels identified by Ukrainian intelligence as “Grek” and “Major”, believed to be after an inspection of the crash site.
“Major”: These are Chernukhin folks who shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those Cossacks who are based in Chernukhino.
“Grek”: Yes, Major.
"Major": The plane fell apart in the air. In the area of Petropavlovskaya mine. The first “200” (code for dead bodies). We have found the first “200”. A Civilian.
G: How are things going there?
M: Well, we are 100% percent sure that it was a civilian plane.
G: Are there a lot of people?
M: Fuck! The debris was falling straight into the yards.
G: What plane is that?
M: I haven’t figured out yet. I haven’t got close to the main wreckage. Now I’m nearby the place where first bodies started falling. Here are remnants of internal brackets, chairs, bodies.
G: Are there any weapons?
M: Nothing at all. Civilian belongings, medical scraps, towels, toilet paper.
G: Are there any documents?
M: Yes. One belonging to a student from Indonesia. From Thompson university.
A third conversation is of an unidentified rebel and Cossack commander Nikolay Kozitsin.
Rebel: Regarding the plane shot down in the area of Snizhne-Torez. It’s a civilian one. Fell down near Grabove. There are lots of corpses of women and children. The Cossacks are out there looking at all this. They say on TV it’s AN-26 transport plane, but they say it’s written Malaysia Airlines on the plane. What was it doing on Ukraine’s territory?
Kozitsin: That means they were carrying spies. They shouldn’t be f*cking flying here. There is a war going on.
God help us!