MH17: Final report into disaster to be published

The final report into what caused flight MH17 to crash will be published today.

A total of 298 people, including 10 Brits, were killed when the Malaysia Airlines plane was seemingly shot down over Ukraine last July.

The Dutch Safety Board (DSB), who are releasing the report, are likely to give only a partial explanation as to what happened.

This is because it will not deal with "blame or liability", which is the responsibility of a separate criminal inquiry by the Dutch national prosecutor's office, which is still ongoing.

The DSB will focus on what caused the crash and the issue of flying over areas of conflict.

It will also examine why Dutch surviving 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.

A report published last September said wreckage was ''consistent with the damage that would be expected from a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside''.

Despite the difficulty in accessing the site due to fighting in the area, the black box flight recorders were recovered early on.

The DSB said this information showed the MH17 flight proceeded normally until 1.20pm local time on July 17, 2014 after which all recordings "ended abruptly".

It added said pieces of wreckage were pierced in numerous places and that most likely there had been "an in-flight break-up".

The MH17 disaster followed on from the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March last year, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 237 passengers on board.