Investigators: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 Downed by Warhead (VIDEO)

October 13, 2015By: Adam Leposa

Dutch investigators have concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was downed by a Russian-made “warhead” fired from eastern Ukraine, according to their final report released Tuesday, NBC News reports. While the findings of the Dutch Safety Board did show that the warhead was from a BUK surface-to-air missile, the report did not assign blame for the crash.

A separate report released by the company that manufactures the BUK missile, Almaz-Antey, contradicted the Dutch findings. Almaz-Antey said that it had conducted a test in which it detonated a BUK missile near the nose of an aircraft similar to flight MH17, but that the resulting damage patterns were different than those seen on the MH17 wreckage.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed July 17, 2014, when it was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in Ukraine near the Russian border. At the time, the area where the plane went down had seen fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, although the area remained open to commercial air traffic.

Following the crash, government officials and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) called for a review of the way in which risky flight routes are assessed.

“Of course, nobody should be shooting missiles at civilian aircraft—governments or separatists,” IATA Director General and CEO Tony Tyler said in a statement released shortly after the crash. “Governments will need to take the lead in reviewing how airspace risk assessments are made. And the industry will do all that it can to support governments, through ICAO, in the difficult work that lies ahead.”