Dutch investigators have released a preliminary report into what brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 over Ukraine.
The report published Tuesday by the Dutch Safety Board stops short of saying the Boeing 777 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on July 17, but its findings appear to point to that conclusion. It says the aircraft broke up in flight, “probably as the result of structural damage” caused by multiple “high energy objects” that hit the plane.
Numerous reports following the crash suggested the plane was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine, although both sides denied any involvement. The report says there’s no evidence of tampering with the flight recorders, but it was several days before they were turned over to investigators, who weren’t able to actually inspect the site from the ground. Of the 298 people killed, around two-thirds were Dutch.
