MH17: Dutch investigators point to 'external cause' of the crash - live updates

The report has been published on schedule and “points towards an external cause to the crash”.

The DSB said MH17:


Broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside. There are no indications that the MH17 crash was caused by a technical fault or by actions of the crew.


13m ago08:55


Eyewitnesses in Ukraine told BBC Panorama’s John Sweeney that Russians were operating a BUK missile launcher in the area where MH17 came down.


Three eyewitnesses, all civilians, separately told Panorama that they saw a missile-launcher in rebel-held territory a few hours before the Boeing jet was hit.


One eyewitness saw the missile-launcher roll off a low-loader at Snezhnoye, around ten miles from the crash site, at around 13:30 local time (10:30 GMT).


“We just saw it being offloaded and when the BUK started its engine the exhaust smoke filled the whole town square,” he said.


The eyewitness told the BBC that the crew struck him as Russian soldiers: “Well-disciplined, unlike the rebels, and not wearing the standard Ukrainian camouflage uniform sported by government and rebel troops alike.”


“They had pure Russian accents. They say the letter ‘g’ differently to us,” he said.


22m ago08:46


Journalists have been handed embargoed copies of the report which is due to be officially published in the next few minutes.




— anna holligan (@annaholligan)September 9, 2014


Just received first official #MH17 report - listen to @BBCr4today & watch@BBCWorld pic.twitter.com/mguMgSoONC




32m ago08:36


Almost eight weeks after the crash the remains of the victims continue to bought home, the Straits Times reports.




— ST Foreign Desk (@STForeignDesk)September 9, 2014


Remains of 2 more #Malaysia victims on#MH17 brought homehttp://t.co/ipRIf5vwpNpic.twitter.com/1Gw2HAtCBg




Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, said his prayers are with the families of the victims.




— Mohd Najib Tun Razak (@NajibRazak)September 9, 2014


Today we bring home two more victims of#MH17 . My prayers are with their families in these trying times.




Updated at 8.39am BST


51m ago08:17


Conspiracy theories abound among pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine about how MH17 came down, writes Shaun Walker in Donetsk.


Russia has stopped short of officially blaming Ukrainian forces for the tragedy but says there is much unexplained about the incident, and the Russian press has floated various conspiracy theories, including suggesting that MH17 was actually MH370, the Malaysian Airlines jet that went missing months earlier.


According to that theory, the plane was filled with corpses by the CIA and deliberately crashed in east Ukraine to make Russia look bad.





Witnesses in towns near the crash site told the Guardian that they had seen what appeared to be a large missile system similar to the BUK system believed to be used against MH17 on the move on the day of the crash.


A rebel leader admitted to Reuters that the rebels had indeed received a BUK in the days before the crash, but publicly the leaders have always denied they were ever in possession of the missile system, and in the region people generally believe that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down the plane.





At a rally in Donetsk on Monday, held to celebrate the anniversary of the liberation of east Ukraine from the Nazis in the Second World War, three women were waving large photographs of a Malaysian airlines Boeing 777 in the air.


On the reverse, they had written political slogans, one of them said: “We will cleanse our lands from the fascist junta”, referring to the Kiev government.





Asked why they had chosen photographs of the plane, the women said MH17 was a plane full of “peaceful people who had been killed by the junta”.





Malaysian investigators travelled to Donetsk in the days after the plane crash and negotiated directly with the Donetsk rebels to gain the handover of the plane’s two black boxes, which were presented to the delegation at a surreal press conference past midnight in the rebel capital.


The handover was negotiated when the Malaysian prime minister telephoned Donetsk’s self-declared prime minister, Alexander Borodai, a Russian citizen who has since left the government and returned to Russia.




— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7)September 8, 2014


Sign says "cleanse our lands from the junta". Dubious choice, to put it mildly, to use back of MH17 photo to write onpic.twitter.com/zL5TqaOq4S