Dutch Officials say Russian-Made Missile Destroyed Malaysia Air Flight 17

The Dutch Safety Board says Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile as it flew over eastern Ukraine.

Joustra said it would take further investigation to determine the exact location of the missile launch site. All of the land was in the hands of pro-Russian separatists fighting Ukrainian forces at the time of the disaster, according to daily maps of fighting released by the Ukrainian National Security Council.

Western officials and experts blamed separatist forces, who they said were being aided by the Russian military.

“The report does not have facts, which confirm the full value and credibility of the conducted investigation”.

Many reports, including an investigation by the open-source group Bellingcat, also suggest the plane was downed by a missile fired from near Snizhne.

A tear in the fuselage clearly shows how the front part of the plane was torn off, after which it broke up in the air, the board’s chairman Djibbe Joustra said. But about 160 planes crossed the area of eastern Ukraine the day the flight was shot down.

There was sufficient reason to close the airspace in the east of the country as a precaution, but “the Ukrainian authorities failed to do so”, said Mr Joustra.

Relative Robby Oehlers said a wave of sadness had swept through the room.

On the other side, Russian Federation asked the Dutch Safety Board to look for other scenarios, such as the possibility that Flight MH17 was struck by an air-to-air missile, but their scenarios were rejected and considered as baseless.

“I personally have no doubt that this was a planned operation of the Russian special services aimed at downing a civilian aircraft”, Yatsenyuk told a televised cabinet meeting.

“This report, from the Dutch Air Safety Board, will not provide all the answers to all of their questions”.

A separate Dutch investigation, this one criminal, is looking into who fired the missile, which detonated just a few meters from the cockpit of the airliner, shattering the Boeing 777 in mid-air.

“No-one at the time had any kind of awareness of such a threat… everyone was absolutely sure it was about purely conventional weapons”, said Klimkin, adding that no efforts would be spared to bring the perpetrators to justice.

But the Board added, “it can not be ruled out that a few occupants remained conscious” during the 60 to 90 seconds before the plane crashed, though they were barely able to comprehend the situation.

The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) said on Tuesday, after the report was unveiled, that it had proposed that plane crashes with large casualty numbers be investigated by global commissions under the auspices of the worldwide Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).