An initial 400-page report published by the French investigating magistrates in January 2012 explained how the first missile missed the plane but the second ignited 3,000 litres of kerosene in the fuel tank.24 The plane, travelling at 222 kilometres an hour and at an altitude of 1,646 metres, became a ball of fire in the night sky and, travelling onwards for some seven seconds, eventually hit the ground, disintegrating as it did so. The plane fell into the garden of the presidential villa, where the president’s wife was preparing a barbecue for her husband. The mangled bodies of the twelve
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