The rescue agency official also said a sonar scan had detected an object
"suspected to be the cockpit" of the plane about 500 metres away from the
fuselage.
There was also a report from an official that they had found the cockpit. And that divers had been tasked with recovering the pilots. But, ref its importance as one of the four corners and the pilots, I would have expected a much much stronger statement if they were sure. I still have it in my 'unconfirmed column'.
Ref the article in your post - The same news was published a few days ago, I think citing the same official. The wording is very careful. So, still unconfirmed. Which might be a bit surprising. The baseline scenario would make it quite probable that the whole cockpit section would snap off. Such a section would not be hard to find and identify?
My impression of the blackandwhite underwater photos is that the ROV sailed over the main fuselage from aft to front. The letters visible are on the righthand side of the plane. And would therefore rest on its left side. The last image stops short of the forward and cockpit section then. The 500 m difference would then be strange when you compare it to the baseline scenario. You could imagine some kind of weird flip and float scenario, but Mr Occam R would cut that short. Keep in mind, the water at the spot is 28-30 m deep only.
If the cockpit lies under the track and before the main. Then some kind of shallow angle nose first landing could be an option (breaking the nose of and the main slamming back down a fraction later). Depending on the angle you could imagine a Tau instead of a Sigma force (engineers will know) on the 'hinge' of the radome. Which might explain how it came off. So we need to know the location of the cockpit.