Many of the passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were heading to an AIDS conference in Melbourne, Australia, according to several Australian news outlets.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian both reported that a conference member told the gathering that more than 100 conference members were killed in the air strike and crash, but that figure has not been confirmed elsewhere. In its official statement, the International AIDS Society did not cite any casualty figures.
The World Health Organization confirmed that the group's spokesperson Glenn Thomas was among the dead in Thursday's disaster. Dutch AIDS researcher Joep Lange was also reportedly a passenger on the doomed plane, according to friends and family on social media.
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