One was a globe-traveling flight attendant. Another was an animal-loving soccer fan. More than 100 were AIDS activists and researchers en route to a conference in Australia.
And six were an entire family — husband, wife and four children — returning from Kazakhstan for a joyful homecoming.
Stories of the 298 victims of Thursday’s horrific Malaysia Airlines plane disaster emerged as relatives and friends tried to make sense of the tragedy.
Instead of picking up her sister and nephew at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Akma Mohammad Noor was left in a state of heartbroken confusion.
“I saw the news on the TV,” she told Reuters of the Boeing 777, which was struck by a missile Thursday afternoon and fell out of the sky in eastern Ukraine.
“She was supposed to travel with her son, but he did not want to go. We were supposed to celebrate together,” she said.
Noor’s sister, Rahimah, was a passenger on the jet, which was set to touch down in Malaysia early Friday.
Among those feared dead are 23 Americans, according to Reuters. No names had been released as of early Friday.
Malaysia Airlines released a preliminary flight list that also included 154 Dutch, 27 Australians and 23 Malaysians — 15 of whom were the plane’s crew.
The victims’ social-media sites detail seemingly happy lives horribly and suddenly cut short.
Shazana Salleh, one of the flight-crew members, spent the past few weeks watching the World Cup.
She posted on her Facebook page about the final last week between Germany and Argentina.
In March, she had hugged an elephant’s trunk while sporting a big smile.
Jennifer Van Der Leij, whose passport and connecting flight ticket were found at the crash site, spent last year touring the world.
The brown-eyed beauty shared Facebook photos of herself cuddling with a tiger cub.
An estimated 108 other passengers were researchers and activists heading to an international AIDS conference in Australia.
One of the researchers was the renowned former president of the International AIDS Society, Joep Lange, a well-known HIV researcher from the Netherlands.
“The HIV/AIDS movement has truly lost a giant,” said Chris Beyrer, president-elect of the International AIDS Society.
Glenn Thomas, a World Health Organization media coordinator, was also among the victims.