Chunk of fuselage, bodies ‘out of nowhere’ in forest

INVESTIGATORS have found a piece of fuselage of Malaysian Airline as well as more bodies.

A member of a local militia stands guard at the MH17 crash site.

INVESTIGATORS have found a piece of fuselage of MH17 as well as more bodies more than a week after the flight was shot down.

Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said the section found in a heavily wooded area “appeared out of nowhere”.

“I think this is the part of the plane that came down which ... travellers would say resembles an airline,” he said.

“The windows were still intact and if one wanted to they could even climb inside and be covered.

“It almost appeared out of ­nowhere because there were no tell-tale signs, no broken branches, nothing to indicate that a piece of fuselage had landed there.” Investigators also hoped to visit the ­cockpit site of the aircraft late yesterday. When News Corp Australia was at this site three days ago, the aircraft’s log book, flight path charts, maps and other documents were still lying on the ground near the remains of the cockpit.

Tony Abbott’s special envoy, Angus Houston, was yesterday surprised this material was still there, but said investigators had had difficulties reaching all areas in the 50sq km site because of the civil war in eastern Ukraine.

“Realistically, we have not been able to do what we have wanted to do,” he said. “If this crash site was anywhere else then of course we would ­cordon it off from all and conduct a search but it’s in this area.’’

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An Australian Federal Police officer yesterday moved about the crash sites to “suss out” how the contingent of 50 officers announced by the Prime Minister could maintain security for ­forensic analysts and crime scene investigators in a war zone.

“It looks like they’re sussing the security situation and then pos­sibly coming here,” Mr Bociurkiw said.

OSCE observers escorted the Australian officer along with two diplomats, a Malaysia Airlines executive and a Malaysian civil aviation agency official to the site.

“The Australians are getting a sense of the security for the area, they’re mapping it, they’re getting a sense of where the crash sites are,” he said, adding that two or three more Australian officials were expected to join the inspection teams later today.

Mr Bociurkiw said the team, which included 12 OSCE monitors, also found more human ­remains yesterday and another large piece of the fuselage.

He said parts of the wreckage that the team inspected on ­Wednesday had “almost machinegun types of holes”.

Meanwhile, heavy shelling of rebel-held towns and encampments by Ukrainian government forces continued yesterday about the crash site.

A few air-crash investigators went about their work at sites of the downed jet in rebel held territory, as thuds of shelling continued about them.

The crisis in the region could get worse before the beginning of a large-scale investigation, led by Dutch authorities, with the US warning it had evidence Russia was intending to deliver “heavier and more powerful” rocket launchers to Ukraine separatist forces.

It was a Russian SU11 mobile missile system that is believed to have downed the Malaysia Airlines flight.

The US said yesterday it had ­intelligence Russia was firing rockets into Ukraine and against government forces trying to put down the separatist rebellion ­centred about the rebel stronghold city of Donetsk, which was under siege from shelling.

US State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf refused to reveal where the information was coming from to support the claim, but added they had evidence Russian weaponry was entering porous borders with the rebel-held part of eastern Ukraine.