MH17: It was a missile

Investigators confirmed on Tuesday that a Buk missile brought down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine last year.

The Dutch Safety Board report comes nearly 15 months after the Boeing 777, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed into pro-Russian, rebel-held territory, killing all 298 people on board.

The investigators unveiled a reconstruction of the front section of the aircraft showing how parts of the nose, cockpit and Business Class cabin were rebuilt from fragments recovered from the crash scene.

Relatives of the victims were told of the report’s conclusions before the document was released.

Investigators were charged with finding the accident’s cause, explaining why the Boeing was flying over the region and why there were delays in notifying the relatives. 

The report does not directly address who was responsible, but a separate international criminal investigation has been set up to look into this aspect of the disaster.

A preliminary report issued last year said the Boeing was probably struck by multiple “high-energy objects from outside the aircraft”.

At that time, the Safety Board stopped short of saying the aircraft was shot down by a missile, but said its findings appeared to point to that conclusion.  www.malaysiaairlines.com

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