MH17 was shot down by Russian Buk missile, Dutch report concludes

Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board said on Tuesday in its final report on the July 2014 crash that killed all 298 aboard.

The long awaited findings of the board, which was not empowered to address questions of responsibility, did not specify who launched the missile.

"Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane against the left-hand side of the cockpit... This warhead fits the kind of missile that is installed in the BUK surface-to-air missile system," the chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, Tjibbe Joustra, told a press conference.

The Dutch investigators said the missile exploded less than a metre (yard) from the MH17 cockpit, killing three crew and breaking off the front of the plane. The aircraft broke up in the air and crashed over a large area controlled by rebel separatists who had been fighting government troops there since April 2014.

At a meeting with victims' families earlier Tuesday, Joustra said passengers who were not killed by the impact of the missile would have been rendered unconscious by the sudden decompression of the aircraft and a lack of oxygen at 33,000 feet.

Joustra was speaking at the Gilze-Rijen military base where the flight cabin and business class section of the Boeing 777 have been assembled painstakingly from wreckage brought back from Ukraine.

• The board also found that Ukraine had reason to close airspace over the conflict zone, and that the 61 airlines that had continued flying there should have recognised the potential danger.

Experts and Western governments believe rebels shot down the aircraft, possibly mistaking it for a Ukrainian military plane. Moscow has offered alternative theories, including that it might have been shot down by a Ukrainian fighter, or by Ukrainian forces.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)
13/10/15
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• MH17 shot down by Russian-made missile from war-torn Ukraine...

• Países Bajos sobre el MH17: "¿Por qué se permitió volar al avión en una zona de guerra?"