Dutch officials have been working for 15 months on the investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The plane was downed over Ukraine and 298 people aboard were killed.
Reconstructed debris from MH17 is shown to reporters in the Netherlands on Tuesday.
Michael Kooren / Reuters
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was hit by a Russian-made BUK missile, causing the crash that killed all 298 people aboard the plane, the Dutch Safety Board said in a report released Tuesday.
The long-anticipated report on the July 17, 2014 crash, found those on board — 80 of whom were children — lost consciousness immediately after the missile detonated outside the left side of the plane's cockpit, which then broke off from the rest of the aircraft.
The wreckage of flight MH17 then landed across in territory in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian rebels fighting against the Western-backed government in Kiev. Each side has since blamed the another for downing the aircraft.
The missile was fired from a 320 square kilometer (123.553 square mile) area in the eastern part of Ukraine, said safety board head Tjibbe Joustra, as he stood before a reconstruction of the plane built from debris collected from the crash zone.
Of those killed on the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight, 193 were Dutch citizens. Additionally, 43 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, and 12 U.K. citizens.
Prior to the release of the report, Dutch officials met with the families of the victims to share their 15-month investigation.
"We can't be 100% certain but we think that was the case. We have to think they didn't suffer," Barry Sweeney, whose son Liam died in the crash, told the BBC.
Bulent Kilic / AFP / Getty Images
The safety board chairman was highly critical of the decision to allow the plane to fly through the airspace in eastern Ukraine while an armed conflict was occurring.
"Why was Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 flying over an area where an armed conflict was taking place?" he asked. "Because no one thought civil aviation was at risk."
"In the opinion of the Dutch Safety Board, there was sufficient reason to close the airspace as a precaution," he said. "The Ukrainian authorities failed to do so."
Meanwhile in Moscow, the Russian missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey on Tuesday held a press conference to detail findings of its own investigation into the downing of MH17.
Rejecting the Dutch report before it was even released, the company said it had conducted an experiment on Oct. 7 that determined the BUK missile was an older model that belonged to the Ukrainian government and was fired from Ukrainian government-held territory, according to the Russian state-sponsored network RTV.
The release of the Russian findings was mocked by the head of the Dutch Safety Board, Tibbe Joustra, according to a Guardian journalist at the Dutch press conference. "It's always special when people already know that they don't agree with a report that's not even published yet," Joustra told reporters.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
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