Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 crashed as a result of a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board says.<\/p>\n
The missile hit the front left of the plane causing other parts break off, it said in a final report into the July 2014 disaster, which killed 298 people.<\/p>\n
The West and Ukraine say Russian-backed rebels brought down the Boeing 777, but Russia blames Ukrainian forces.<\/p>\n
The report does not say who fired the missile, but says airspace over eastern Ukraine should have been closed.<\/p>\n
The plane – flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur – crashed at the height of the conflict between government troops and the pro-Russian separatists.<\/p>\n
Among the victims were 196 Dutch nationals and 10 Britons.<\/p>\n
Click here for minute-by-minute updates<\/p>\n
The report says the three crew members in the cockpit were killed by the missile explosion instantly.<\/p>\n
However, it adds, it was unclear at which point the other occupants died, and the possibility of some remaining conscious for some time during the one-and-a-half minutes it took for the plane to go down could not be ruled out.<\/p>\n
Matching paint<\/strong><\/p>\n Presenting its findings at the Gilze-Rijen military base in the Netherlands, the safety board showed plane parts that had been brought back from the rebel-held Donetsk region and reconstructed.<\/p>\n Board president Djibbe Joustra said the impact pattern could not have been caused by a meteor, an air-to-air missile or an internal explosion.<\/p>\n Instead, he said, a warhead had detonated above the left-hand side of the cockpit, causing structural damage to the front, which then broke off from the rest of the plane.<\/p>\n He added that paint had been found on metal fragments within the plane that matched with missile fragments on the ground.<\/p>\n The evidence pointed to a 9N314M warhead, which can be fitted to a 9M38M1 missile launched by the Buk surface-to-air missile system, the report found.<\/p>\n Mr Joustra said there had been sufficient reason to close off Ukrainian airspace but Ukraine did not do that – and on the day of the crash, 160 flights flew over the area in question.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 crashed as a result of a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board says. The missile hit the front left of the plane causing other parts break off, it said in a final report into the July 2014 disaster, which killed 298 people. The West and Ukraine say Russian-backed rebels brought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":159341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[14],"yoast_head":"\n