(April 16): Nine months after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, a family has found comfort in the discovery of a passport photograph amid the debris still littering the crash site.

The photograph of Malaysian-born Mabel Anthonysamy Soosai, 45, was spotted amid the wreckage a few days ago. According to a report by The Mirror, the photo was burned and stained with soot.

“It broke my heart to see the picture, her passport still in the debris of the plane,” her brother Clement was quoted as saying.

“I saw her passport and thought: I miss you so much. But you know, she is smiling a little in the picture, just as she smiled so often. I guess she is trying to tell me something.”

Mabel, a former university lecturer, was returning to Malaysia from Amsterdam with her husband Paul Rajasingam Sivagnanam, 52, and their nine-year-old son, Matthew. All three died in the crash.

Her family members continue to grieve and say that the authorities must come clean on what had happened to the plane, which experts say was shot down with a Russian BUK ground-to-air missile. However, they add that the discovery of Mabel’s passport photo “couldn’t have come at a better time”.

“I hear her saying: 'I'm smiling. I'm in good hands, and here is my picture, smiling’,” Clement said in the report.

“It comforts me to a certain extent after what has happened.

“So easily this picture could have been burned, or you might not have seen her face, or even destroyed altogether.

“But no, somehow it survived and we receive it a year after our Easter together at her home when she was making cupcakes with all the children.”

Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board, all of whom died.

“I told my mum that Mabel passed away in a field of sunflowers,” Clement said in the report, referring to the flowers growing in the field where the plane had crashed.

“She adored sunflowers. And God took her away in the a field of sunflowers.” – The Malaysian Insider