In what is the 452nd day after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down, the Dutch Safety Board‘s air safety investigation has now been released, and with it, macabre new details in how the 298 passengers and crew on board died.
While BUK missile which struck the plane’s cockpit would have killed the pilots immediately, passengers on board may have been alive for up to 90 seconds afterwards, the report found.
“They were exposed to extreme and many different, interacting factors: abrupt deceleration, decompression, reduced oxygen level, extreme cold, powerful airflow [and] objects flying around.”
“Some occupants suffered serious injuries that probably caused their death. In others, the exposure led to reduced awareness or unconsciousness in a very short space of time.”
“It cannot be ruled out that some occupants remained conscious for sometimes during the one to one and a half minutes for which the crash lasted.”
“The Dutch Safety Board deems it likely that the occupants were barely able to comprehend the situation in which they found themselves.”
They also found no indications of any conscious actions, and no text or photos on mobild phones, both of which have been found after several other aircraft crashes.
The report has also confirmed what Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says “the Australian government has said all along was the cause“: that the Russian-made BUK missile was fired from eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebels were fighting Ukrainian forces.
Moments after the report was released, the Ukrainian Government blamed the Russian Special Forces, claiming that no “drunk” Ukrainian separatist militants could have been able to fire the BUK missile system.
Back in June, a state-run Russia weapons manufacturer released their analysis of the MH17 wreckage, finding the weapon was indeed a BUK surface-to-air missile (and not from a Ukrainian fighter jet as they’d previously claimed), but that it was an old version no longer in use by the army, and a decade past its use-by date.
Speaking to the ABC this morning, Ms Bishop said that “this report did not, nor was it intended, to find the responsible parties.”
“We still have to hold those responsible for the downing of the plane to account.”
The Dutch Safety Board released a time-lapse video showing the reconstruction of the destroyed aircraft.
Timelapse of MH17 reconstruction
Investigators have released a timelapse video of the painstaking reconstruction of MH17. It’s helped them finally give victims’ families some answers: http://bit.ly/1RFIria
Posted by The Australian on Tuesday, 13 October 2015
Pictures: Dean Mouhtaropoulos via Getty Images.
