Security officials in Ukraine say the downed Malaysia Airlines jet in eastern Ukraine suffered an explosive loss of pressure after it was punctured by shrapnel from a missile.

They say the information came from the plane’s flight data recorders, which are being analysed by British experts.

However, it remains unclear who fired a missile, with pro-Russia rebels and Ukraine blaming each other.

Many of the 298 people killed on board flight MH17 were from the Netherlands.

Dutch investigators leading the inquiry into the crash have refused to comment on the Ukrainian claims.

Heavy fighting has prevented an international police force composed of Dutch and Australian officers from reaching the crash site for a second consecutive day.

Ukraine’s army said on Monday it had managed to capture two towns near the wreckage in its bid to win back territory from the hands of the rebels.

The international delegation was stopped in Shakhtarsk, a town some 20 miles (30km) away from the area where flight MH17 was brought down.

The town was reportedly struck by shelling, causing residents to flee in cars.

“We are sick and tired of being interrupted by gunfights, despite the fact that we have agreed that there should be a ceasefire,” said Alexander Hug, the deputy head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) team in Ukraine.

They had hoped to secure the site so that the wreckage and human remains can be examined by international crash experts. Most of the bodies have been removed, many of them repatriated to the Netherlands.

Ukrainian security spokesman Andrei Lysenko told reporters on Monday that the plane suffered “massive explosive decompression” after it was hit by fragments he said came from a missile.

Source: BBC

An Air India plane flying less than 25 kilometres from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 when it was downed had tried to make contact with the pilots, a newspaper said Sunday.

The Times of India said Ukrainian air traffic controllers had asked the Air India pilots to try and establish contact with the Malaysia Airlines jet, which had stopped responding to its calls.

The Air India plane, which was flying from Delhi to Birmingham and was less than 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) from Malaysia MH17, received no response, according to the paper.

“The AI Dreamliner was less than 25km from the Malaysian aircraft when the latter was hit by a missile,” an unidentified airline source told the newspaper.

“When the pilots learned of the cause of the crash later, they were stunned.”

According to the newspaper, it is standard practice for air traffic controllers to ask pilots of aircraft in the vicinity to get in touch with pilots who have stopped responding.

The newspaper also said that minutes before the crash, the Air India pilots heard air traffic controllers give the Malaysian plane a “direct routing”.

This allows a plane to fly straight rather than tracking from one navigation point to another, and saves time and fuel.

An Air India spokesman declined to comment on the report.

The report comes despite a denial by India’s civil aviation ministry last week that the Air India plane was close to the Malaysian jet, which was cut down over Ukraine’s troubled eastern region on Thursday.

Ukraine accuses Moscow of helping pro-Russian rebels to shoot down the Malaysian plane, killing 298 people.

Video has emerged of rescue workers recovering what appears to be a black box flight recorder from the wreckage of MH17.

The footage recorded on Friday shows men wearing Ukrainian Emergency Ministry uniforms working in a wheat field in the village of Hrabove.

Walking away from emergency vehicles parked at a rural roadside, the men appear to conduct a co-ordinated search at the crash site.

One man is then seen walking across the field carrying an orange-coloured flight data recorder and handing it to a colleague.

Audio from another worker, who is not seen, can be heard saying “flight recorder”, in Russian.

The footage was released as separatist leader Aleksander Borodai said rebels were keeping what they presume are MH17′s black boxes in the eastern city of Donetsk, but would need experts to confirm that they were the plane’s flight recorders.

Borodai, self-styled prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told a news conference: “Some items, presumably the black boxes, were found, and they have been delivered to Donetsk and they are under our control.

“There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes, but we brought to Donetsk some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner.”

Another rebel official, Sergei Kavtaradze, said he thought there were two of the presumed black boxes.

Two hundred Ninety Eight (298) people, including 10 Britons, died when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot out of the skies as it flew over eastern Ukraine on Thursday afternoon, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Ukraine’s Emergencies Ministry said this morning that 196 bodies have now been recovered, after concerns were raised yesterday over how they had been treated at the crash site.

Source: Mirror.uk

US Secretary of State John Kerry says there is overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane in Ukraine.

Mr Kerry called on Russia to take responsibility for the actions of the rebels, saying their handling of the dead had been “grotesque”.

All 298 people on flight MH17 died when it was reportedly hit by a missile.

Russia has been accused of providing the rebels with an anti-aircraft system that was allegedly used in the attack.

Earlier, the remains of up to 196 people were loaded on to refrigerated rail wagons in eastern Ukraine, to be taken to an unknown destination.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has called on pro-Russian separatists not to use the bodies as pawns in their conflict with the Ukrainian authorities.

“There are 298 bodies on that site – their families, their loved ones want them home now,” she said.

Mr Kerry said the US had seen major military supplies moving into Ukraine from Russia in the last month, including a convoy of armoured personnel carriers, tanks and rocket launchers.

Intercepted calls suggested a Russian SA-11 missile system had been transferred to the rebels, Mr Kerry said, and the US had seen a video of a launcher being moved back into Russia after flight MH17 crashed.

“There’s [an] enormous amount of evidence that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these systems, training the people on them,” Mr Kerry said on a US TV network.

He also threatened further sanctions on Russia and called on European allies to get tougher with President Putin after the “wake-up call”.

Source: BBC