HRABOVE, Ukraine — A child’s jump rope, its yellow handles blistered and charred. A burned book in Tagalog. Chunks of twisted fuselage. More than seven weeks after being shot from the sky, the wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 still lay strewn Tuesday across the fields of eastern Ukraine.
As evidence of the July 17 aviation disaster that killed all 298 people on board remained exposed to the elements, investigators hundreds of miles away in the Netherlands — who have not yet visited the crash site because it is deemed too dangerous — released a preliminary report that left key questions unanswered.
The plane had no mechanical or other technical problem in the seconds before it broke up in the sky after being struck by multiple “high-energy objects from outside the aircraft,” the report said.
There were multiple punctures in the cockpit and front section of the fuselage, it said — damage that could be caused by a missile that detonates in front of its target and peppers it with small chunks of metal. However, investigators did not identify the source of the fragments or say who fired them.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the findings were consistent with “our original assessment, that it was likely shot down by one of these surface-to-air missiles fired from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.”
“I’m unaware of other objects or ways that it could be brought down that are consistent with that finding,” Harf said. “It highlights questions for which Russia must still answer.”
The slow pace of the inquiry, its cautious preliminary conclusion and the fact that wreckage and human remains are still lying in Ukraine frustrated and angered victims’ families.
A separate Dutch-led criminal investigation is underway.
Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the Dutch Safety Board that is leading the international investigation, acknowledged the preliminary report — mandated by international aviation guidelines — did not shed much new light on the downing of the Boeing 777.
“I understand a lot of people say, ‘Why don’t they work a little quicker?’ But this will take its time,” Joustra said.
Governments whose citizens died on Flight 17 were left in little doubt about what happened.
“The findings are consistent with the government’s statement that MH17 was shot down by a large surface-to-air missile,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a statement.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the head of a mission to bring back human remains and belongings would travel to Ukraine on Wednesday. But the region is still deemed too unsafe for the Dutch Safety Board staff.
