Missile blamed for downing MH17 jet

The Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash that killed 298 people in July last year was caused by a Buk missile system, the Dutch Safety Board concluded in one of its final reports on Tuesday.

The long-awaited findings of the board, which was not empowered to address questions of responsibility, did not specify who launched the missile.

But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called on Russia to cooperate fully with the criminal investigation into who was responsible for the downing.

The chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, Tjibbe Joustra, told a news conference, "Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane against the left hand side of the cockpit.

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

"Additional forensic evidence is needed to determine the location of the launch," Joustra said.

Dutch investigators said the missile exploded less than a meter from the cockpit, killing three crew there.

The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200 traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, broke up in the air and crashed over a large area in eastern Ukraine controlled by rebels who had been fighting government troops there since April last year.

The safety board also found that Ukraine had reason to close airspace over the conflict zone.

The findings were swiftly disputed by the missile maker Almaz-Antey, which has carried out its own investigation into the crash.

The Russian company said it had performed a test that disputed the Dutch version of events, and said the damage to the aircraft pointed to the use of an older type of missile.

Yan Novikov, director of Almaz-Antey, said, "The results of the experiment completely dispute the conclusions of the Dutch commission about the type of the rocket and the launch site."

Russian news agency Tass quoted Alexander Luzan, a former deputy chief of the Russian army air defense, as saying that the modification and type of the Buk missile, as well as the position of the Buk missile system that brought down the plane suggest that the Ukrainian Armed Forces might have downed it.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk blamed Russia's security service.

"I 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.

Reuters - AFP - Xinhua