Russian-made missile shot down MH17 plane — Dutch Safety Board report

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 crashed as a result of a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board has said, Tuesday.

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 down the Boeing 777, but Russia blames Ukrainian forces.

The report does not say who fired the missile, but says airspace over eastern Ukraine should have been closed.

The plane – flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur – crashed at the height of the conflict between government troops and the pro-Russian separatists.

Among the victims were 196 Dutch nationals and 10 Britons.

The report says the three crew members in the cockpit were killed by the missile explosion instantly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He added that paint had been found on metal fragments within the plane that matched with missile fragments on the ground.

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.

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.

The board does not have the authority to apportion blame, under the rules governing international crash investigations.

Mr Joustra suggested that the aircraft was most likely to have been brought down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile – which experts say both Russian and Ukrainian armies possess.

The government in Ukraine and several Western officials have said the missile was brought from Russia and launched from the rebel-held part of Ukraine.

A separate Dutch-led criminal investigation is under way. Dutch Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke on Tuesday said a number of “persons of interest” had been identified, but there was still much to be done and the inquiry would not be finished this year.

Earlier, Russian officials from Almaz-Antey – the state firm that manufactures Buk missiles – said the evidence suggested the plane had been shot down by a surface-to-air Buk missile fired by Ukrainian forces.

Using footage of their own mock-up of shrapnel hitting the fuselage, the officials said the missile had been fired from Ukrainian-controlled territory.

They argued the missile used was a decades-old model no longer used by Russian forces.

In July, Russia vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council to set up an international tribunal into the MH17 air disaster.

President Vladimir Putin said at the time that such a tribunal would be “premature” and “counterproductive”.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Malaysia authorities, Tuesday, October 13, received reports that an airplane wreckage bearing the nation’s flag, along with human remains, has been discovered on Sugbay Island in the Philippines.

The presence of the Malaysian flag has prompted speculation that the wreckage may be that of another Malaysia Airlines’ missing Flight MH370.

Locals on the island claim to have discovered a wrecked airplane fuselage along with the skeletal remains of the passengers and crew.

According to reports, a teenager stumbled upon the wreckage while hunting for birds in the jungle. Her uncle, an audio-visual technician, contacted authorities to report the finding.

But the likelihood that MH370 has been found in a Filipino jungle is low.

This latest discovery doesn’t fit the flight’s projected flight path. Evidence shows that MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and flew northeast toward China before turning west over the Malay Peninsula. Investigators believe the aircraft then turned south, flying over the southern Indian Ocean before crashing after running out of fuel.

The search for the Malaysian jet had been focused on a 7.3-million-square-mile area in the southern Indian Ocean off the western coast of Australia.

In July, a piece from the left wing of the Boeing 777-200ER that operated as MH370 was discovered on the French Territory of Reunion Island, in the western Indian Ocean nearly 4,800 miles away from Sugbay Island.

Furthermore, Australia’s News.com reported that Filipino police are baffled, as they have not had any recent reports of a plane crash on the island.

MH370 disappeared March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China.

The 600,000-pound Boeing 777-200ER, registration number 9M-MRO, vanished with 239 passengers and crew onboard.

Should the wreckage in the Philippines be from MH370, then many theories about the fate of the missing airliner will be proved incorrect.