Dutch preliminary report on MH17 crash due

Dutch experts are due to publish a highly anticipated preliminary report into what brought down Malaysia flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 exploded over eastern Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 passengers on board including 193 Dutch citizens.

The air-crash team will release its report at 08:00 GMT on the website of the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) on Tuesday.

The West has accused Russian-backed separatists of shooting down the plane with a Moscow-supplied surface-to-air missile. Russia has blamed Ukrainian forces.

The Dutch investigators have been unable to visit the site in the war-torn Donetsk region due to the continued fighting and have relied on information from Ukrainian crash specialists for information from the scene.

Sara Vernooij, OVV spokeswoman, told AFP news agency: “It is certainly possible to draw meaningful conclusions without having been to the scene.”

However, the OVV has stressed the report will not affix blame.

Investigators are expected to make findings based on information from the aircraft’s black boxes, and pictures and video taken at the scene, as well as information supplied by Ukranian air traffic control.

The “black boxes” have been shipped to Farnborough in Britain to be examined by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.

The OVV said the preliminary findings will be “factual information based on sources available to the OVV”.

A full report is not expected until mid-2015, it said.

“We investigate the cause of the accident and not who’s responsible,” Vernooij told AFP.

Shortly after the crash forensic experts travelled to the site to collect body parts, but that search has also been suspended due to heavy fighting in the area.

So far 193 victims of flight MH17 have been identified.

Meanwhile, Ukraine on Monday accused pro-Russian rebels of waging fresh attacks in the east putting a fragile truce backed by Kiev and Moscow in peril.

It is hoped that air crash investigators will be able to return to the site if the ceasefire holds, but analysts said it was too early yet to make an assessment on the team’s security.