RIJKSWEG, NETHERLANDS-- Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board concluded on Tuesday in its final report on the crash in July 2014 that killed all 298 people on board.
The board however did not point the finger at any group or party for firing the missile.
At the time of the crash, a war was raging in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces when the aircraft was downed.
"A 9N314M warhead detonated outside the airplane to the left side of the cockpit. This fits the kind of warhead installed in the Buk surface-to-air missile system," said the Safety Board head Tjibbe Joustra.
Russia disputes that a Buk may have been used. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov responded to the findings by saying there had been "an obvious attempt to draw a biased conclusion, and carry out political orders," according to Russian news agencies.
The makers of the Buk said their tests had shown that the aircraft could not have been hit by a missile launched from rebel-controlled territory.
The safety board's report said that a 9N314M warhead had exploded to the left of the plane's flight cabin, sending shrapnel towards the aircraft with "tremendous force."
The detonation killed three crew members in the cockpit instantly and caused the breakup of the plane, which exploded when it hit the ground tail-first.
The report said shrapnel fragments all pointed to a ground-launched Buk missile.
Joustra said it was likely that passengers not killed by the impact of the missile would have been rendered unconscious very quickly by the sudden decompression of the plane and the lack of oxygen at 33,000 feet.
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