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MH17 Ukraine disaster: Relatives briefed on Dutch report

MH17 Ukraine disaster: Relatives briefed on Dutch report

Relatives of some of the 298 people who died on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 have been briefed on a report by the Dutch Safety Board.

The report finds the plane was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile, relatives told the BBC.

Victims would have lost consciousness almost immediately, they report.

The West and Ukraine say Russian-backed rebels brought down the Boeing 777. But Russia claims a missile was fired from Ukrainian-controlled territory.

 

The report will not apportion blame.

The plane - flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur - crashed in rebel-held eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014 at the height of the conflict between government troops and the pro-Russian separatists.

Among the victims were 196 Dutch nationals and 10 Britons.

Four questions

The Dutch Safety Board presented its findings first to the victims' relatives. Reporters will be briefed at the Gilze-Rijen military base in the Netherlands in the coming hours.

The board will also show parts of the aircraft that have been brought back from the rebel-held Donetsk region and reconstructed.

  • The report looks at four key issues:
    what caused the plane to disintegrate in mid-air
    why it was flying over the conflict region
    why some relatives had to wait four days before receiving official confirmation that their loved ones were on board
    to what extent passengers and crew were aware of what was happening in the final moments.

Barry Sweeney, father of British crash victim Liam Sweeney, told the BBC that it appeared a missile had struck the cockpit first - killing all three crew inside and leaving fragments inside their bodies.

He said the cockpit then appeared to have broken off.

But he and other relatives briefed on the report say they were told it was extremely unlikely that anyone on board had any notion of what was happening.

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

A separate Dutch-led criminal investigation is expected to publish its findings in several months' time.

"There's been so much spin and propaganda and rumours and politics. So many 'experts' give their opinions. All we want are basic facts."

Evert Van Zijtveld, deputy chairman of the MH17 Air Disaster Association, lost his son, daughter and parents-in-law when flight MH17 was shot down.

Access to the wreckage was limited. The catastrophe was swiftly hijacked and politicised.

Fifteen months later, the Dutch Safety Board is finally publishing its definitive report.

The aviation report will not apportion blame: its sole purpose is to establish what caused the crash and "prevent similar incidents from happening again".

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

That was apparently confirmed by the relative who spoke to the BBC about the report contents.

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.

Report 'wrong'
Earlier on Tuesday, Russian officials from Almaz-Antey - the state firm which manufactures Buk missiles - once again rejected those accusations.

During a presentation timed to pre-empt the Dutch report, officials said the evidence suggested the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air Buk missile fired by Ukrainian forces.

Using video footage of their own mock-up of shrapnel hitting the fuselage of an aircraft, the officials said trajectory evidence showed the missile had been fired from Ukrainian-controlled territory. They argued the missile used was a decades-old model no longer in use in the Russian arsenal.

Russia says Dutch investigators have not taken account of its findings.

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 the establishment of such a tribunal would be "premature" and "counterproductive".

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