By Robert Wall and Andy Pasztor
Air accident investigators probing the downing of Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine said Tuesday that
high-energy objects struck the Boeing 777 and caused the plane to
break apart midflight
"The initial results of the investigation point towards an
external cause of the MH17 crash," Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the
Dutch Safety Board, said in releasing an interim report. The report
is the first official publication on the cause of the incident. The
Dutch group is leading the probe that also involves representatives
from the U.S., U.K. and International Civil Aviation
Organization.
There is no evidence of a technical fault, the report said. The
plane's pilots issued no distress call, according to investigators,
and their last communication with air-traffic controls, involving
routine acknowledgment of a route change, occurred about seven
seconds before the onboard recorders stopped working.
The Boeing 777 was brought down on July 17 while flying at
33,000 feet from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur killing all 298 people
onboard. The U.S. and Ukraine accuse Russian separatist rebels of
shooting down the plane with a sophisticated antiaircraft missile.
Russia denies its allies were involved.
The incident escalated western efforts to impose sanctions on
Russia for its involvement in Ukraine. Russia has imposed
retaliatory sanctions and said it may bar western airlines for
using its airspace on heavily trafficked flights to Asia.
Accident investigators have said they would not seek to
establish culpability. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on
Saturday said intelligence reports on the downing of the plane are
"pretty conclusive."
The Dutch-led group said the jetliner was "pierced in numerous"
places. "The pattern of damage to the aircraft fuselage and the
cockpit is consistent with that which may be expected from a large
number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from
outside," the board said. The findings are consistent with a
missile strike. A missile warhead creates shrapnel to destroy its
target.
The objects that struck the plane are likely to have led to a
loss of structural integrity of the Boeing 777 and an in-flight
break up, the board said. "This also explains the abrupt end to the
data registration on the recorders, the simultaneous loss of
contact with air traffic control and the aircraft's disappearance
from radar," it said in the report.
The final report is due to be published within a year of the
accident, the board said, adding it expected more evidence to
become available.
Write to Robert Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor at
andy.pasztor@wsj.com
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