Prosecutors investigating the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane over eastern Ukraine in 2014 said on Thursday for the first time that they had identified the missile used to shoot down the aircraft as coming from a Russian military brigade.
Flight MH17 was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014 while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 people on board, two-thirds of them Dutch.
Wilbert Paulissen, head of the crime squad of the Netherlands' national police, said the missile had been fired from a carrier belonging to 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.
In an interim update on their investigation, prosecutors 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."
Russia has denied involvement in the incident. There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the investigative development.
Dutch officials have announced any suspects arrested in the shooting down of flight MH17 will be tried in the Netherlands under an agreement reached with the countries leading the joint probe.
