The Wall Street Journal July 25, 2014

Shrapnel Damage Is Found on Debris From Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

'Almost Machine Gun-Like Holes' Are First Official Sighting of Evidence Suggesting a Missile

By Alexander Kolyandr, Matina Stevis and Robin van Daalens

Monitors at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -2.22% Flight 17 said Thursday they had detected 'shrapnel-like' holes on parts of the plane, marking the first official, on-the-ground sighting of evidence suggesting the plane was downed by a missile.

Officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission deployed in eastern Ukraine spotted a part of the plane's fuselage dotted with 'shrapnel-like, almost machine gun-like holes,' the spokesman for the mission, Michael Bociurkiw, said.

The holes were found in two separate pieces of the fuselage and were examined by the Malaysian aviation security officials who are part of the international mission investigating the crash, Mr. Bociurkiw said.

The damage to the jet's exterior is a crucial clue to understanding what brought down Flight 17. Still, the presence of shrapnel damage may not immediately point to the SA-11 surface-to-air missile that U.S. officials have said was likely fired by pro-Russia rebels, as some air-to-air missiles also are designed to destroy an aircraft with a shrapnel-producing warhead.

Finding actual shrapnel would yield more certainty over the missile type. Different missiles use different warhead materials, opening the possibility for a chemical analysis that could sort out what kind of weapon was involved.

The SA-11 has a high-explosive fragmentation warhead that sends a 'spherical cloud of shrapnel' that detonates nearby and is designed 'to sever the rods, hoses and wires' on the aircraft, said John Pike, director at GlobalSecurity.org.

Such a determination still wouldn't answer the most critical question of who fired the missile. Ukraine, which also owns Buk antiaircraft systems, has said it didn't fire any of its systems, a claim the U.S. has backed.

The crash site continued to be unsecured for an eighth day, and the OSCE said human remains were still strewn across the field where the plane crashed.

The Dutch government, which is in charge of a multinational investigation into the cause of the crash, was still trying to take control of the site Thursday.

The crash site's location in rebel-held territory in Ukraine has complicated efforts to collect the remains of the 298 dead and hampered investigation efforts.

Over the next days, the Dutch will send 23 investigators and 40 unarmed military policemen to the site of the crash to help with the recovery of victims' remains and the investigation into the causes, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Thursday.

'The situation in the region is constantly monitored,' Mr. Rutte said, adding that, according to Dutch intelligence, it will be safe to go there Friday.

The Dutch Safety Board also said Thursday that efforts to extract information from the plane's flight data recorder were successful, meaning both black boxes have been successfully downloaded.

The two devices that store information from the aircraft and record conversations in the cockpit arrived Wednesday in the U.K. for analysis by the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch at Farnborough, England.

Investigators won't disclose yet the details of what is on the two devices to protect the continuing investigation.

Meanwhile, officials leading the operation to identify the bodies of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash warned that the process could take months and that there was no certainty they would all be positively identified.

A full week after the crash, forensics experts are beginning to the painstaking and complicated work. They have to piece together information from the victims' families, collect DNA samples and dental records, and match that data to the bodies. The sheer number of the victims, too, is set to slow the process.

'These sorts of investigations unfortunately often take a long time, weeks, maybe months,' Patricia Zorko, chief constable of the Dutch National Police, told reporters.

Planes were ferrying bodies from Ukraine to the Netherlands, but officials warned there was no guarantee all the victims' families would get their loves ones' remains back.

'Not everyone is back in the Netherlands—we don't know how many we can identify,' said Attila Höhn, the German chief inspector working on the team.

The first two military transport planes carrying remains of the victims arrived in the Netherlands on Wednesday, carrying 40 coffins. Another 74 bodies arrived Thursday and were received with honors.

Roads were closed as a cortège of 74 hearses, one for each coffin, took the bodies to Hilversum barracks, where the forensic experts are conducting the identification process. More of the victims' remains are due to be transferred to the Netherlands Friday.

Two hundred experts are staffing the forensics mission. The Dutch, who had the highest death toll in the crash, are leading the forensics effort and have 120 people working on the effort. The other 80 are from countries who lost nationals on the ill-fated flight, including Belgium, Germany, the U.K., Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Malaysia.

—Robert Wall and Jon Ostrower contributed to this article.