Kiev Says MH17 Black Boxes Show Crash Caused by Rocket Shrapnel, Ukraine Army Wrests Control of Part of Crash Site
Black boxes recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in rebel-held east Ukraine show shrapnel from a rocket explosion caused the passenger jet to crash, a Ukrainian security official said Monday.
International investigators "indicated that data from flight recorders show that the reason for the destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket explosion," Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said.
Data from the doomed airliner's black boxes was decrypted in Britain after being handed over to Malaysian officials by pro-Russian rebels controlling the crash site of MH17.
Investigators leading the probe in the Netherlands -- which lost 193 citizens on the doomed jet -- refused to confirm the latest information from Kiev, saying that they were "waiting to get a more complete idea of what happened."
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army has seized control of part of the vast crash site of flight MH17 in the east of the country, pro-Russia rebels said on Monday.
"The Ukrainians have taken over a part of the crash site," said Vladimir Antyufeev, self-styled first deputy prime minister of the "Donetsk People's Republic".
Ukraine's military said its troops are battling separatist fighters for control of a string of towns around the impact site and had "entered" the town of Shakhtarsk, some 10 kilometers (six miles) from the scene.
The rebels, accused by Ukraine and its Western allies of shooting down MH17 on July 17, have kept a close guard over the crash site as international anger has grown over possible evidence tampering.
A team of unarmed Dutch and Australian police were forced by heavy fighting to abandon attempts to reach the crash site, where the remains of some of the 298 people killed in the disaster remain rotting in the sun.
But Antyufeev lashed out at Kiev for launching the attack on the site despite the planned visit by international experts and said government shelling was "destroying parts of the site where fragments of the plane are located".
Monday's advances by Kiev forces around the crash site come as the government claims a string of government victories across the wider region that could see the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk cut off from the Russian border.
Antyufeev admitted that the rebel forces increasingly have their backs to the wall and that the military situation on the ground "is very complicated, it is not a secret".
Dutch police, meanwhile, said all remains of the 298 people who died on downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in rebel-held east Ukraine may never be recovered.
"I would love to give a guarantee that all the remains will come back, and all possessions, but... I believe the chances are not very good that we will get it all," Dutch police chief Gerard Bouman said in a briefing to parliament in The Hague.
Bouman said all next-of-kin had been made aware of the situation, adding it was not even clear how many bodies remained unaccounted for.
"What we found in the body bags in Ukraine was indescribable. The contents were horrible, hardened people whose work this is are finding it hard to process. Bits and pieces all mixed, big and small, were found in the bags," he said.
A team of unarmed Dutch and Australian investigators were forced by heavy fighting on Monday to abandon yet another attempt to reach the crash site.
Rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine had said on Sunday that a train carriage filled with personal belongings of the victims had been handed over to Dutch officials.
But Dutch justice ministry spokesman Lodewijk Hekking told AFP on Monday that no handover had taken place and only a few items were in official hands so far.
"Last Friday two investigators were on the site, where they collected a handful of personal belongings -- passports and other small items -- which they took with them," he told AFP.