Many of them might not have known that a wary Qantas had stopped flying this route over rebel-held Ukraine, or that US and European authorities were warning airlines to steer clear.

Then a surface-to-air missile struck Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and 298 bodies rained down on those patchwork fields. Soon they lay among the wheat and purple flowers, their personal travel items scattered nearby, a passport here, a Bali guidebook there.

When Australian journalist working in Ukraine, Denjen Doroschenko, walked through the  site on Friday, it was littered with the undiscovered bodies of men, women and children more than 12 hours after the crash. He saw at least 60 bodies, including several children, many of which he had uncovered himself.

‘‘You walk through the grass and you just find a child just lying there,’’ he told Fairfax Media from the scene. ‘‘It’s just a horrible sight. You’ve got no idea how bad it is. It’s just a horrible sight to see.’’

Doroschenko described the area as resembling a ‘‘charnel house’’, or a vault for storing human skeletons.  Emergency services on the ground appeared to be ineffective and separatist organisations were ‘‘sort of in control’’, Doroschenko said.

‘‘They’re clueless about how to control a disaster area at all. ‘‘You can just be walking through the field and you just find a body. And you call them over and they put a flag on it. A little flag on a stick.

‘‘I found the nose of the aircraft melted into the ground. The fire has basically melted most of the fuselage away. It’s a terrible scene.’’

Doroschenko reported that pro-Russian rebels had tried to prevent access to the crash site by blocking major roads. He and three other journalists travelled to the scene by car using back roads.

The site is being patrolled by rebel fighters with guns, he said. ‘‘They shook my hand and said, ‘We’re sorry.’ I said, ‘Mate, [298] people died and that’s all you can say?’

‘‘They just looked at me blankly and then they walked away, carrying their guns and grenade launchers.’’

Among the dead were the 28 Australians. There were Perth businessman Nick Norris, a boating enthusiast, and his three grandchildren; 27-year-old Melbourne University student Elaine Teoh; Sister Philomene Tiernan, of the Kincoppal convent school in Rose Bay, Sydney; and Albert and Marie Rizk, who had two children and who were active in outer Melbourne’s Sunbury Lions Football Club. There were 100 or so international travellers who, after flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, were to connect to Melbourne for an AIDS conference.

And the world held its breath. Within hours of the atrocity, disbelief was overtaken by accusation and the apprehension that – even if it was a diabolical bungle – it could be a flashpoint for a conflict much bigger than the pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

‘‘PUTIN’S MISSILE!’’ screamed the front-page splash in The Sun in London.

In Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott   spoke almost as plainly. ‘‘The initial response of the Russian ambassador was to blame Ukraine for this and I have to say that is deeply, deeply unsatisfactory,’’ he said, adding: ‘‘Hopefully the Russians will realise their whole standing in the world is at risk here.’’

The United States leadership was more circumspect. Secretary of State John Kerry said the UN would help with a ‘‘credible, international investigation’’ to find the facts, while President Barack Obama contacted the Ukraine and Malaysian leaders.

With limited information to work with, some American intelligence analysts suspected the rebels used a Russian-made SA-11 surface-to-air missile, others suspected a Russian-built Buk mobile missile battery was used. Whatever the delivery system, in the past week the rebels have shot down two Ukrainian military aircraft and damaged a third.

‘‘We did warn you – do not fly in our sky,’’ came a social media post about the same time as the MH17 attack. Quickly taken down, it was under the name Strelkov, or ‘‘shooter’’. He is Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer. He might have been referring to one of the military planes, but he is now a suspect in the MH17 slaughter.

Had he, or others, mistaken it for a military target? What could they gain from such a monstrous act of terrorism?

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry quickly released to media intercepted calls – complete with English translations – that it said incriminated the rebels. ‘‘We have just shot down a plane,’’ a separatist commander, identified as Igor Bezler, told a Russian military intelligence official. People in the audio sounded shocked to discover it was a civilian plane.

Regardless, Russian President Vladimir Putin defiantly claimed ‘‘the country in whose airspace it happened bears the full responsibility for this terrible tragedy’’.

But the blame-shifting was rapid. Malaysia Airlines was in the frame, too. It has been an airline under siege since its flight 370 vanished without trace in March. Why was it now flying over Ukraine’s rebel territory?

It was far from alone. Until this disaster, 300 commercial aircraft aday were flying through eastern Ukrainian airspace, most on long-haul flights between Europe and south-east Asia. But, some months ago, Qantas shifted its Dubai-London flight 740 kilometres south.

Before seeking someone to blame, family and friends are dealing with the loss. ‘‘We are all shaking our head in shock,’’ Sunbury councillor Jack Ogilvie said of his constituents Albert and Marie Rizk. ‘‘They were supposed to come back today ...  they didn’t make it.’’

Simone La Posta did make it. A marketing co-ordinator at ABC Local Radio, she had been booked on the crashed plane – twice – only to have both tickets cancelled.

‘‘We flew into KL [Kuala Lumpur] via Amsterdam on the MH17 flight the day before,’’ she told ABC radio. ‘‘It’s a bit surreal to think that one day later and I wouldn’t be standing here talking with you right now.’’

And yet so many heading to the international AIDS conference were together, on that plane. They included a hero of their field, the Dutch researcher Joep Lange, a former president of International AIDS Society.

‘‘How do we measure how much a person has done for humanity?’’ tweeted Seema Yasmin, an American doctor and journalist, in mourning. ‘‘People like Joep change the course of epidemics."

They change the world for the better.

The world changed, but not for the better, on the day flight MH17 was blown out of the sky and scattered on Ukraine’s pretty fields.

With agencies and staff reporters