DHAKA: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was hit and downed by a Russian-made surface-to-air BUK missile over eastern Ukraine last year.

The Dutch Safety Board said, reports Al Jazeera.

‘Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane against the left-hand side of the cockpit,’ the chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, Tjibbe Joustra, told a press conference on Tuesday.

‘This warhead fits the kind of missile that is installed in the BUK surface-to-air missile system.’

While he insisted investigators had not pinned down the exact location of the missile’s launch site, maps shown to reporters clearly showed the area near Donetsk held by pro-Russian separatists.

Even before the highly-anticipated release of the official report on the disaster, Russian officials were disputing the findings which are sure to further degrade strained ties between Moscow and the West.

Joustra also hit out at the Ukrainian authorities for allowing civil aircraft to continue to fly above the eastern part of the country despite the raging conflict between Kiev’s forces and pro-Russian separatist insurgents.

‘We have concluded as a precaution there was sufficient reason for the Ukrainian authorities to close the air space above the eastern part of their country,’ he said.

BDST: 2150 HRS, OCT 13, 2015
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