Relatives of the victims of flight MH17 are to hold new talks with the public prosecution department about a further hunt for remains at the crash site in the east of Ukraine, the Volkskrant said at the weekend.

The move follows reports of the discovery of a piece of human bone by a Dutch journalist who visited the crash site earlier this month.

The piece of bone comes from an MH17 victim whose identity has already been established. Relatives feel a new mission to Ukraine might make it possible to recover more human remains, perhaps including bones of the two passengers who have not yet been definitively identified.

Michel Spekkers and Stefan Beek returned from Ukraine last Saturday. On their arrival at Schiphol airport, officials confiscated a rubbish bag containing ‘MH17 items’ that they had brought back with them from Ukraine, which included not only the fragment of bone but also a telephone, cameras and a laptop.

Last Thursday a magistrate ruled that the confiscation, which the Dutch union of journalists NVJ had described as ‘disproportionate’, was legitimate.

Hack

Meanwhile, the Dutch Safety Board was targeted by hackers shortly before publication of its preliminary report on the disaster, the board’s president Tjibbe Joustra confirmed to the NRC on Saturday.

The hack, using a technique known as ‘spear phishing’ was ‘identical’ to that used to target the Democratic Party in the US during the presidential elections, the paper said.