A total of 298 passengers and crew were killed, including 80 children in total. The flight was hit by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile.
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A total of 283 passengers, including 80 children, and 15 crew members were on board. The plane crashed after being hit by a Russian-made Buk missile over eastern Ukraine, a 15-month investigation by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) found in October 2015.
The cabin crew was killed instantly, and the forward section of the aircraft broke off. The wings, passenger compartment, and tail remained in the air at least a minute longer before separating and dropping to the ground.
It was cloudy and the last words heard from the crew came when Flight 17, at 33,000 feet, responded to a Ukrainian flight controller's direction towards its next waypoint, repeating the coordinates: ROMEO NOVEMBER DELTA, Malaysian one seven.
According to the JIT, the Buk TELAR used to shoot down MH17 originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces from Kursk in the Russian Federation. This is the result of the extensive comparative investigation of the JIT.
Human rights judges have said cases against Russia for the shooting down of flight MH17 and other alleged war crimes can proceed to trial, as they ruled that separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine were under the effective control of the Russian Federation.
Gary Slok, 15, and his mother Petra Langeveld both lost their lives when a missile shot down the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur plane as it flew over eastern Ukraine.
The passengers' final momentsThese would have included: the aircraft abruptly changing speed, oxygen decreasing, extreme cold and air rushing through the cabin, objects flying around and a very rapid descent.
The Wall Street Journal reports that many members of the same families were lost on flight MH370. Six members of one Chinese family are missing, the paper says, including a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy, who were both US citizens.
In November last year a Dutch court convicted two Russian men and a Ukrainian national in absentia of murder for their role in the shooting down of Flight MH17 with the loss of 298 passengers and crew, and handed them life sentences.