Russian firm says BUK missile downed flight MH17

The Russian firm making missiles similar to the one the West claims downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine says the passenger jet was likely hit by a BUK missile system.

All 298 passengers and crew on board the Malaysia Airlines jetliner — the majority of them Dutch — died when it was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine last year.

Officials from state-controlled missile producer Almaz-Antey say they could not pinpoint which side shot down the plane, but intimated that the Ukrainian army was responsible as they unveil their own report into the incident based on publicly available photographs of the wreckage.

“The first stage of our analysis showed that the type of missile system used was a BUK-M1,” company official Mikhail Malyshevsky says at a press conference, according to Russian news agencies.

Company officials say that the BUK-M1 missile has not been produced in Russia since 1999 and is in the arsenal of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Almaz-Antey alleges that the missile was probably fired from close to the village of Zaroshchenske to the south of the jet’s flight path.

— AFP