The Dutch Safety Board has found that Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was brought down by a Russian-made 9M38 Buk missile.
The Boeing 777, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over territory held by pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing the 298 people aboard.
In the Safety Board’s final report into the disaster it stated that the missile hit the front left of the plane, making part of it break off, the BBC reported.
While many in the West and Ukraine say Russian-backed rebels brought down the Boeing aircraft, Russia claims a missile was fired from Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The report did not attribute blame but said the aircraft should never have been flying over that area of Ukraine and that the country should have closed the airspace to civil aviation.
The Dutch Safety Board presented its findings first to the victims’ relatives at the Gilze-Rijen military base in the Netherlands.
Among the victims were 196 Dutch nationals and 10 Britons. The relatives were told they would have lost consciousness almost immediately.
Reconstructed parts of the aircraft were shown.
A Dutch-led criminal investigation is expected to publish its findings in several months’ time.
Dutch Safety Board president Djibbe Joustra 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, reported the BBC.
Ahead of the report’s release, Russia rejected claims it was responsible for shooting down the airliner, saying its report directly contradicts the one by Dutch authorities.