MH17 crash families told: Loved ones did not suffer

GRIEVING relatives have been told the 298 passengers killed on flight MH17 “would have died pretty quickly” after a missile hit the jet.

Victims on board the Malaysia Airlines plane would have lost consiousness almost immediately, after a Russian-made Buk weapon struck the cockpit, an official report has revealed.

Ten of those who died in the disaster over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine were British.

Brit victim Liam Sweeney North News and Pictures

Barry Sweeney, whose 28-year-old son Liam was on board, said they were told the bomb exploded, hitting the cockpit first, killing the pilots.

That would have caused disorientation and confusion in the rest of the plane, he said.

He added: “Hopefully most people were unconscious by the time this happened and death would have occurred pretty quick.

“That is a comfort for 298 sets of relatives.”

MH17 debris AFP

Mr Sweeney’s son was travelling from Newcastle with his friend John Alder to watch their beloved Newcastle United play in a pre-season tour of New Zealand.

The findings of the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) will be released later in The Hague, to relatives of those on the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur Boeing 777 last July.

They will say the Malaysia Airlines flight was downed by a Russian surface-to-air missile.

Brit victim John Alder Bradley Ormesher - The Times

And the report claims there was little chance that those on board felt anything. When missile struck the cockpit, it broke off from the rest of the plane.

Results of report are read out to families AFP

Mr Sweeney added: “We cannot be 100 per cent, but we have to think that was the case.

“I’m going to have to go away and think ‘Yes, Liam died instantly as (did) 297 other people’. If you think otherwise, it’s just going to hurt forever.

“It was the trip of a lifetime, unfortunately they didn’t get there.”

He believed his son was “probably having a drink” as the plane flew high over Ukraine, and would have been excited to be visiting New Zealand and seeing the Lord of the Rings sets as well as watching the Magpies.

Relatives were told the missile could have been fired from anywhere in a 320sq km area, he said.

Vigil for MH17 victims

The DSB report did not indicate who fired the rocket. That will be addressed by criminal investigators who will report back later.

Yan Novikov, head of Almaz-Antey, gave a news conference but did not specify what was in the report, and he did not say whether he had been given an advance look.

Evidence displayed at today's conference AFP

The DSB has focused on what caused the crash and the issue of flying over areas of conflict.

It also examined why Dutch relatives had to wait for up to four days for confirmation that their loved ones had died, and to what extent the passengers were conscious before the plane hit the ground.

The investigation was led by Holland because 196 of the victims were Dutch.

Crash site AFP

A Russian state-controlled missile-maker says its own probe into the crash directly contradicts the Dutch authorities.

BUK missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey said fragments of its missile were found at the MH17 crash site.

But that both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries have BUK missile systems in their arsenal.

Head of Almaz-Antey Yan Novikov said if the plane was hit by a BUK missile, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske - which Russia claims under Ukrainian government control at the time of the crash.