Dutch Safety Board chairman Tjibbe Joustra said on Sept. 09 that the metal objects embedded in bodies did not appear to be from the 777 fuselage.

Dutch Safety Board Investigation Comes Forward With Details On What Hit Flight MH17

The Reuters article that I cited says "500 forensic samples taken from the bodies of the victims and luggage...", so I'm pretty sure the population size of the fragments is 500.

Westerbeke said in the Der Spiegel interview that so far there are no results from the analysis of the 25 fragments. This is the 50th day after the foreign objects have become public knowledge. Investigators have probably known since late July. After all this time they're not sure if the samples are from a BUK, an R-60, or something else. Hence Westerbeke can't rule out fire from a fighter aircraft.

Meanwhile for all we know 475 other objects wait to be carefully analyzed. This process is painfully slow.

Someone seen damage from continuous rods on MH17 plane? Why again A-A missille used in another lie?
MH17 shot downed by BUK missile's high-explosive warhead with strike elements. Many holes with damage from cubes and cuboids. It sign of this missile!
Not round holes from aircannon (penetration shells), not multiple explosives damages inside plane (HE shells), not pieces of construction cutted by chainsaw - long and uninterrupted (by continous rods warhead like R-60).
Blame, but Earth still dont have fighter which can hover OVER MH17 plane on alt=10000m and shot 500 shells in plane all in one field so these puncture plane from above to below and stay invisible on radars.
It physically impossible.
Any earth gun even in static position (on fixed weapon mount) will place holes on static target with dispersion from point of targetting which descripted by normal circle statistic probability (circular error probality) and shown as Gaussian bell curve. It called in ballistic as Ballistic Dispersion.
That mean no one shell dont go only in target point but usually deviated from it and only random shells hit target very close to target point.
Remember it static weapon mount.
On real fighter, aircannon have very big ballistic dispersion so fighter must carry rapid fire gun (for make enough shots per limited time) and big ammo.
For one-two hits to enemy plane, fighter must produce at least 50-100 and more shots. You can imagine how spread out all these shells if only 2% will hit square 10x10m.
MH17 was not static target but have 300 m/s speed and at least same speed must have interceptor (for pursue and correct errors during interception), Summary it 600 m/s. On that speed aircannon shells must puncture all Boeing from cabin to aft. And dont by stroke but by dispersed holes.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...40/fig3-10.gif
But we can see a cabin with linear distributed big holes from cubes which mean dynamic field of strike elements (Buk warhead) where each element start fly in touch with other elements so they redistributed in space with equal probability (exception non-system elements and pieces of equipment, corpse).
Despite on any personal lie ballistic and physic cannot lie.
DSB dont have expierence in work with military equipment like strike elements from Buk warhead it why they cannot say immedeately what author of damage. And investigation is slow and accurrate proccess when any piece must be descripted, attached and found source/target. Only this make investigation is investigation, dont smoke club.

anonymousdefender

just FYI - the gent recently interviewed by Der Spiegel (Fred Westerbeke) is a CRIMINAL investigator alias prosecutor, and he does NOT work for Dutch Safety Board..

So whatever he says in public about the case, must be bullet-proof alias backed by hard facts and evidence.

Trying to illustrate it with analogues from CIS space (aka SNG):

Dutch Safety Board (DSB) at least as far as aviation is concerned does the same what MAK (Interstate Aviation Committee) does in SNG area (minus Ukraine apparently now).

Mr. Westerbeke, on the other hand, works for law enforcement (investigative branch of it), which probably best compares to 'Genprokuratura' (in recent past) or 'Sledstvennij Komitet' (nowadays) in Russia.

As prosecutore he can talk about evidence, but hard facts is simple - plane hitted by strike elements in cabin from forward and above to below.
Earth (even Germany) have not much sources which can do it. Missile surface-air can do it. Missile air-air can but read below. Aircannon - cannot (even if evidence show it or prosecutors claim they found it). MLRS shell - cannot (very popular stupid idea from russian press/patriots). Explosive on board - cannot.
Shape of holes strip off all possible air-air missiles since they use continous rods. But holes is absolutely hard fact. You can easy see that fact on multiple photos. Dont need to be main prosecutor because even he cannot change that shape.
http://i.imgur.com/2EGBamN.jpg
So hard facts say Buk missile (other missiles have other strike elements btw) down MH17. Germany reject to help Ukraine for gain control over area. Now Germany want evidence. Of course it right time, when russian specialists place all needed evidence signs on controlled place.

The Dutch having a little trouble apparently with 25 of 500 fragments recovered. Probably trying to decipher apparent entry and exit holes from high energy objects in the Captains window area.
Mods, I think ya gotta figure out a way to make those photos of the window frame area look like they are punctured in only one direction.
Or maybe forbid the Dutch from making their unclear statements.:ok:

It was a confusing week in the Netherlands concerning MH17.

First, now the number of identified has risen to 289. There are still remains in the Netherlands to be identified, but identification is very difficult because the DNA has degraded either by high temperatures or by decay.
In totaal 289 slachtoffers rampvlucht MH17 geïdentificeerd | Nieuwsbericht | Rijksoverheid.nl

Today, 31 october, a dutch team went together with the OVSE and recovered remains of victims at locations of the crash site that not have been searched. So when the opportunity arises, something happens.

Last week a journalist visited the crash site to make pictures of the site after 100 days. At the main impac site, he mentioned a stench of human remains, actually seeing a few remains himself. He also mentioned the continuation of fighting around the crash site and that some Ukraine forces had entered some of the areas.

This week there was a lot of confusion, because of the interview of Pavlo Klimkin, the foreign minister of Ukraine. He stated that shortly after MH17 was shot down Ukraine didn't mind if the dutch government negotiated directly with the rebels for access to the crash site. The dutch government allways stated that direct negotiations with the rebels was against the will of the Ukraine government, and that all negotiations would go through the OVSE. Dutch press jumped on the story and blamed dutch government to act too cautiously after the disaster. However, today Ukraine official statement is that from the beginning, Ukraine requested all countries involved (malaysia, Netherlands, Australia) to use the OVSE for contacting the rebels.

'Nederland was te voorzichtig rond rampplek MH17' | RTL Nieuws

Kiev tegen direct contact met rebellen om MH17 | RTL Nieuws

So it looks like that as long as the crash site is in Rebel hands and there is nothing more than this cease-fire, there will be no real investigation on location. Rebel leaders may state that the investigators are welcome, but they don't state what price needs to be paid to be truely welcome. Reduction of sanctions, international acception of DNR, it might all be on the list.

@NotPegasus and others:

That 500 pieces of shrapnel were found in lugage and bodies, doesn't mean these are 500 pieces of the missile, even most of the 50 pieces of metal might not be from a missile. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the accident all kinds of particles get embedded into the lugage and human remains. Check the coroners report on TWA 800. So most particles are either from the plane or stuff on board, propelled to supertornado speed by the 800 km/hour wind entering the cabin.

My point about the population of 500 foreign objects is not about the origins of the objects. Rather I question how the objects are being examined.

If you want to know something about a very large population it might not be possible to survey each and every member of that population. Instead you examine a sample of the population that you hope is representative of the population. You do this at the risk of sampling errors which result in findings that do not accurately represent the population.

Given a population of only about 500 objects, why examine carefully only 5% of them? Why take a chance that the sample does not represent the population? Why examine in a way that undermines confidence in your findings? Do they lack the resources to do the job?

The investigators say they have narrowed the possibilities to two scenarios, a ground to air attack and an air to air attack. A population of 500 foreign objects might be large enough to confirm one of the scenarios. But their approach can lead to undesirable outcomes, namely that they reach the wrong conclusion or (as seems to be the case) they reach no conclusion. They've asked the USA and Russia for more evidence. The USA and Russia might wonder why give the investigators more evidence when they don't utilize fully the evidence they already have.

A population of 500 objects might reveal not only the method of attack but also the sequence of events as MH17 fell to earth. By limiting themselves to a sample of 25 objects they are limiting what they can learn. Why?

May be because they are professional forensic investigators, not statisticians.

P.S. Why are you making bold statements based on almost zero information? Are you a member of the investigation team?

They are not performing an exercise in an undergraduate stats class; they are interested in what caused a single instance (namely the downing of an airliner over Ukraine 4 months ago. The composition and statistical properties of a population of recovered fragments is not particularly relevant or interesting to the investigators (one would presume that most originated on the aircraft). Their objective is to find and identify at least one fragment that originated from outside the aircraft. Thus, a sampling strategy that maximises the probability of analysing such fragments (e.g. picking iron fragments and ignoring Alu ones) is an appropriate one in this case.

Iron has been mentioned before in the context of the sample of 25 embedded objects. Dutch chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke described the samples as 25 pieces of iron. At that time (Sept. 12) he was investigating whether the pieces came from a ground to air missile.

It wasn't reported whether any of the other 475 embedded objects contained iron. It wasn't reported whether they also examined all foreign objects for metals other than iron, such as tungsten, that are hard and dense enough for military application as penetrators.

The comfortable assumption is that the investigators are professionals who of course are interested in any and every foreign object that could have penetrated the aircraft. Perhaps they will say so eventually, but so far they haven't.

The Dutch Safety Board has commissioned the recovery and transportation to the Netherlands of wreckage from flight MH17.

Dutch Safety Board | Investigations & Publication | Investigation crash MH17, 17 July 2014

Recovery
 

Yes, they will finally recover the parts and send these to the Netherlands, probably to Eindhoven. The chairman of the DSB has already been interviewed about this.

The last few days there were a lot of developments: first the news that Ukraine, OVSE and the rebels were negotiating over the recovery of the wreckage, and just a few days later the confirmation that recovery will start soon. Recovery will be carried out by SES (same organisation that recovered most of the victims), parts will be transported to a safe location outside rebel area and transported to the Netherlands to a location in the south. Originally, the reconstruction was supposed to take place in Kharkov, but with Russian soldiers reportedly massing around that border, a different location is understandable.

The stories also indicate that dutch DSB investigators are on the crash site or at least have visited the site, to arrange the recovery of the wreckage.

The interview with the chairman is here:
Wie gaat het MH17-wrak bergen? En 6 andere vragen | RTL Nieuws

Also human remains were recovered in the last few days, and will be flown to Eindhoven on saturday. It seems that the relative rest on the crash site leads to some major leaps forward in the investigation. The dutch investigators are protected by the rebels.

See:
Onderzoekers MH17 beveiligd door rebellen | Rampvlucht MH17 | de Volkskrant
Andrej Poergin, vice premier of the rebels, also states that recovery of the wreckage can only start in 1 - 2 weeks.

The volkskrant also interviewed the rebel leader Aleksandr Chodakovski, who previous claimed that the rebels didn't have a working BUk system, but that he heard stories about a buk systems being used by the rebels in the area and hinted Russian involvement(in short, I do this on memory). I believe this was an interview with Reuters.
But in this interview he declares that the rebels did have operational BUK-systems, but that none of the commanders fired the missile that brought down MH17. He says he was wrongly cited by Reuters.
Not on internet, but in the paper variant of his interview he also claimed that Russian soldiers didn't fight in Ukraine, but had no comment if Russian troops were in Ukraine. And that only a political solution would end the war.

Contrary to his words, the tension seems to rise in Ukraine again, with Russian close to the border all up to Kharkov, unmarked trucks in Donetsk and Rebels and Ukraine government blaming each other for ruining the truce. Let's hope nobody starts an offensive in the next 2 -3 weeks.

'Wij hadden raket, maar haalden MH17 niet neer' | Rampvlucht MH17 | de Volkskrant

A lot of new pictures

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128537380@N08/

Oh dear...
There is a lot of corrosion on some of the parts by now where the shrapnell or rupture exposed bare aluminum.
So if there ever has been chemical evidence of foreign metal particles or residues of propellant or explosives, it is probably destroyed by now.
What a shame.
The cockpit section would have been a single truckload, why has it not yet been recovered ?

Today the German Foreign Ministry has played down an Oct. 19 story in Der Spiegel. The story claimed the the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst intelligence agency) has ample evidence that the pro-Russian militia captured a BUK missile from the Ukrainian army and used it to shoot down MH17. The story was based on statements by Gerhard Schindler, president of the BND, on Oct. 08, when he was holding a secret meeting with members of the parliamentary control committee.

The German Foreign Ministry said that the story's interpretation of Schindler's statements was incomplete and arbitrarily taken out of context.

http://rt.com/news/203995-germany-in...e-report-mh17/

More new Pics.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroen...7646920425903/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/podpolkovnikvvs/sets/

A Page with a lot of Information
http://www.whathappenedtoflightmh17....hot-down-mh17/

"The cockpit section would have been a single truckload, why has it not yet been recovered ?"
Nobody wants to know - the truth is too embarrassing

The latest nonsense being presented by Russian media.

Claims of it being leaked and taken by a "US or British satellite" :rolleyes:

https://img1.1tv.ru/imgsize640x360/PR20141114180250.JPG

https://img1.1tv.ru/imgsize640x360/PR20141114192213.JPG

https://img1.1tv.ru/imgsize640x360/PR20141114192215.JPG

https://img1.1tv.ru/imgsize640x360/PR20141114192217.JPG

https://www.1tv.ru/news/leontiev/271824

It is a Fake.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cla...own-mh17.5107/
?????
http://obkon.ucoz.com/_fr/14/9771894.jpg

That image (7406*5000 pixels, 1.5MB) can be downloaded here (the "Скачать" button). Part of that image from website of Russian 1st TV channel:
https://img1.1tv.ru/imgsize640x360/PR20141114192215.JPG
https://img1.1tv.ru/imgsize640x360/PR20141114192215.JPG
Compare with a screenshot:
http://4put.ru/pictures/max/1023/3142965.jpg
It's a (cropped) screenshot of
http://old.wikimapia.org/#lat=48.206...5&z=12&l=0&m=s

1. Note the 2 km ruler in the lower right corner of the screenshot. If looking from the lowest possible orbit (160 km from satellite to ground, 150 km from satellite to the plane), the plane appears 5 km long.

2. The image depicts the plane over Panteleimonivka village in Donetsk region:
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=48...89349&z=12&m=b
MH17 flew 13 km to the north:
https://gist.github.com/trolleway/b4f513941817ebcd946b
http://4put.ru/pictures/max/1023/3143024.jpg