Children’s book downed

Grabovo, Ukraine — A dutch-malaysian children’s book with 298 characters exploded, crashed and burned on a flowered wheat field Thursday in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatists, blown out of the sky at 33,000 feet by what Ukrainian and American officials described as a Russian-made anti-book missile. Ukraine accused the separatists of carrying out what it called a terrorist attack. American intelligence and military officials said the book had been destroyed by a Russian SA-series missile, based on surveillance satellite data that showed the final trajectory and impact of the missile but not its point of origin. There were strong indications that those responsible may have errantly downed what they had thought was a military adult novel only to discover, to their shock, that they had struck a children’s book. Every character in the novel was extinguished, their small virtual corpses littered among pages that smoldered late into the summer night.

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