US welcomes Netherlands report on downed flight MH17

(Vatican Radio)  The United States says Tuesday's release of the report by a Netherlands-led investigative panel could help prosecute those responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine last July which killed all 298 people on board.

Listen to Stefan Bos' report:

The White House made the announcement after the Dutch Safety Board said the aircraft was downed by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from an area in eastern Ukraine that is controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

After 15 long months, the Dutch Safety Board presented its long awaited report to anxious relatives of those who died in one of the world's worst attacks against civil aviation, and later to journalists.

Speaking in front of the reconstructed plane – pieced together from parts of recovered debris, fitted around a metal skeleton, Board Chairman Tjibbe Joustra said there was only one scenario to explain the disaster, which killed all 298 people on board.

Joustra made clear his panel was convinced that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was downed by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

Massive detonation

"Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside of the airplane, above the left hand side of the cockpit,” he explained. 

“This warhead was of the 9M314M type carried on the kind of missile that is installed on the Buk surface-to-air missile system. As a result of the detonation the forward part of the airplane was torn off. The airplane broke up in the air, the wreckage came down in an area of about 50 kilometres at the eastern part of Ukraine,” Joustra added.

However Russia's state arms producer Almaz-Antey - which makes Buk missiles - criticized the Dutch report.

Its general director Yan Novikov explains that experiments and computer modelling carried out by his company "proved" that the missile that allegedly brought down the Boeing 777 was fired not from the village of Zaroshchenskoe which was controlled by Ukrainian forces at the time.

He added however that if the aircraft was indeed destroyed by the surface-to-air missile system Buk, it was an old model, the 9M38, which was first manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1986 but was removed from service in the Russian army 25 years later.

Russian complex?

His remarks suggested that the missile complex could not have come from Russia.

However Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged Russia to fully cooperate with the upcoming criminal investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

And the White House called the release of the Dutch Safety Board's report "an important milestone" in the effort to hold accountable those responsible for shooting down the aircraft.

Yet Ukraine has come under fire too by Dutch Safety Board Joustra. He recalled that in the months before the crash, "at least 16 military planes and helicopters were shot down in the eastern part of Ukraine."

The Ukrainian authorities, he said, were aware of this. "They stated that occasionally  weapons systems were used that could reach the cruising altitude of civil airliners. Yet despite all this, Ukraine did not close its air space over eastern Ukraine."

"Insufficient reason"

Joustra added that "Ukraine's position is that there was insufficient reason for closing the airspace above the eastern part of the country. We have however concluded that as a precaution there was sufficient reason for Ukrainian authorities to close the airspace above the eastern part of the country."  

The Dutch Safety Board report said the BUK's impact was instantly fatal only to the three crew members in the cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Other crew members and passengers apparently died due to decompression, reduced oxygen levels, extreme cold, powerful airflow, and flying objects.

But the Board added, "it cannot be ruled out that some occupants remained conscious" during the 60 to 90 seconds before the plane crashed, though they were barely able to comprehend the situation.

One passenger was found wearing an oxygen mask, but it was "unclear how the mask got there," raising further questions among those left behind.