Relatives of some of the 298 people who died on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine in 2014, were on Tuesday told of the findings of a final investigation report by the Dutch Safety Board in The Hague.

The DSB report concluded that the aircraft was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile. The report rejected Russia’s version that the plane was hit by a missile fired by Ukrainian troops.

The plane, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, was hit by the missile over Ukranian airspace at the height of the conflict between the Ukraine government troops and pro-Russian separatists. The DSB report revealed that all passengers died or lost consciousness as soon as the missile hit the aircraft.

“It’s hit the cockpit first, killing all three in the cockpit. The cockpit then broke off probably creating confusion in the rest of the plane. Hopefully most people were unconscious by the time this happened,” Barry Sweeney, whose son, Liam, was one of the victims, told the BBC.

Sweeney said it came as some comfort to the relatives that the report concluded that death occurred quickly. “We can’t be 100% sure [that nobody suffered], but we’ve got to sort of think that was the case,” he said.

Sweeney added that the investigators concluded that the missile was fired from a 320 km square area. The relatives would have to wait for the criminal report due early next year to find out more about the events that transpired.

Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the DSB, later said that the Russian government had challenged its findings, alleging that such a conclusion could not be made with certainty. However, Joustra rejected Russia’s objections, saying, the DSB's response are spelled out in an appendix to the report.

Here is a 20-page summary of the DSB's report:

The story so far:

  • MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was travelling over the conflict-hit Ukraine on July 17, 2014 when it disappeared from radar. A total of 283 passengers, including 80 children, and15 crew members were on board.
  • A preliminary report released in September 2014 said the aircraft was hit bynumerous “high-energy objects”.
  • In August 2015, Dutch investigators said they had found fragments “probably” from a Russian-made surface-to-air Buk missile at the crash site, but that it was not yet clear whether the pieces were related to the attack.
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