Malaysian Airliner Downed by 'High

PARIS - Dutch investigators reported Tuesday that the Malaysian airliner that crashed in eastern Ukraine in July was penetrated by what they called 'high-energy objects from outside the aircraft,' a finding consistent with theories that it was brought down by a missile.

The objects struck the cockpit and front fuselage, the investigators reported, suggesting the missile came from the east, meaning it was fired from eastern Ukraine or western Russia. The investigators did not identify the source of the missile or who was responsible for firing it.

The Dutch team also said they found no evidence of mechanical failure or pilot error that could have been responsible for the crash.

Flight 17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when it was blown out of the sky on July 17 over territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels, killing all 298 people on board, of whom two-thirds were Dutch citizens. The United States and Ukraine have accused the separatists of downing the plane with a powerful surface-to-air missile provided by the Russian military.

Graphic: Maps of the Crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Moscow has publicly denied those claims, however, and some Russian officials have gone so far as to suggest the plane was brought down by the Ukrainian military.

Because of intense fighting in the area where the plane, a Boeing 777-200, went down, the investigators' access to the wreckage site was extremely limited in the immediate aftermath of the crash. For days, bodies and debris were strewn across fields near the village of Grabavo, a separatist-controlled area not far from the border with Russia.

Much of the wreckage was left unguarded and accessible to journalists, mourners and curiosity-seekers, raising concerns that important evidence may have been tampered with.

While dismayed about the unsafe conditions that have complicated their work, the Dutch investigators were provided with a trove of on-site photo and video evidence, as well as data from military satellites and radar, to supplement the information gleaned from the plane's flight recorders.

The plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders were recovered by rebel forces in the days after the crash and handed over to Malaysian officials, who in turn transferred them to the Dutch board. Analysis of the data they contained was conducted in Britain by that country's Air Accidents Investigations Branch and presented to the Dutch team in The Hague last month.

The Dutch board stressed that the report published on Tuesday was only a preliminary snapshot of the evidence uncovered and said further analysis and investigation would continue over the coming months. A final report was not expected to be published before next summer.

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