MH17 plane crash caused by missile owned by Russian military, investigators say

The missile that brought down the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine was owned by the Russian military, investigators have said.

The plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17 2014 when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine.

All 283 passengers and 15 members of crew were killed after the missile hit caused it to break apart mid-air.

Prosecutors investigating the incident said on Thursday they had identified that the missile used to shoot down the plane came from Russia's armed forces, based in the city of Kursk.

Russia has always denied any involvement in the incident.

But on Thursday Dutch investigator Wilbert Paulissen, head of the crime squad of Netherlands police, said the missile was part of Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Brigade.

"All the vehicles in a convoy carrying the missile were part of the Russian armed forces", he told a televised news conference.

The investigators says have analysed video images before coming to their decision.

In an interim update on their investigation, prosecutors also said they had trimmed their list of possible suspects from more than a hundred to several dozen.

"We have a lot of proof and a lot of evidence, but we are not finished," said chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke. "There is still a lot of work to do."

He said investigators were not yet ready to identify individual suspects publicly or to issue indictments. The question of whether members of the 53rd Brigade were actively involved in the downing of the plane remains under investigation, he said.

Westerbeke called on witnesses, including members of the public, to help identify members of the crew that was operating the missile system. He also asked for tip-offs in determining what their orders were and in identifying the officials in charge of the brigade.

A Joint Investigation Team, drawn from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, is gathering evidence for a criminal prosecution in the downing of the plane.

The Dutch Safety Board concluded in an October 2015 report that the Boeing 777 was struck by a Russian-made Buk missile.

Dutch prosecutors said in September 2016 that 100 "persons of interest" had been identified in the investigation, while Australian and Malaysian officials had initially expressed hope that suspects' names would be made public in 2017.

Eventual suspects are likely to be tried in absentia in the Netherlands after Russia used its veto to block a U.N. Security Council resolution seeking to create an international tribunal to oversee criminal complaints stemming from the incident.