On Tuesday, 452 days after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down and scattered across towns held by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Dutch Safety Board released a long-awaited report on the causes, consequences and subsequent recovery process of the downed jet.
Flight MH17 went down on July 17, 2014, on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All 298 people on board -- most of whom were Dutch citizens -- were killed.
The plane was shot down by a Russian-made, medium-range, self-propelled BUK surface-to-air missile, which exploded in the air less than three feet away from the cockpit, the Safety Board concluded in the report.
The Safety Board made clear it would not assign blame for the tragedy, but only provide a technical account of the crash and recovery process. The Dutch prosecutor's office is expected to conclude a separate investigation by the end of the year, to find those responsible for shooting down the plane, CNN reported.
The Safety Board also unveiled a partial reconstruction of the plane on Tuesday, pieced together from the hundreds of wreckage pieces collected over multiple recovery missions to the crash site.
The reconstruction helped authorities visualize the angle at which the cockpit was hit, the impact of the hit and how the aircraft eventually broke up, the Safety Board wrote in a summary report.
Take a look at the chilling photos of the reconstruction below:
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