MH17 black box data downloaded, no evidence of tampering

Dutch investigators into the shooting down over Ukraine of flight MH17 said Thursday they had downloaded data from the black box flight recorder and that it had not been tampered with.

"No evidence or indications of manipulation of the recorder was found," the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) said in a statement.

"The data was successfully downloaded and the flight data recorder contained valid data of the flight," it said.

The OVV said on Wednesday that it had successfully downloaded recordings from the black box cockpit voice recorder.

The recorders, salvaged from the plane wreckage in eastern Ukraine, are being analysed at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch headquarters in Farnborough, southwest of London.

AAIB experts are tasked with extracting information from the cockpit voice recorder, which should give them hours of pilots' conversations, as well as the contents of the flight data recorder.

The boxes -- which are actually orange in colour -- were delivered to Farnborough by the OVV, which is leading an international investigation into the crash in which 298 people died, 193 of them Dutch.

The OVV is coordinating investigation teams from eight different countries, including Russia.

Pro-Russian rebels controlling the crash site handed the boxes over to Malaysian officials on Tuesday, following an international outcry over the treatment of the wreckage and the bodies of the victims.

Western governments say the evidence points to the Boeing 777 plane having been shot down with a missile by pro-Russian separatists.