INVESTIGATORS probing the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 have uncovered new footage, featuring militia trawling through burning wreckage and Australian luggage and bragging over what they thought had been a military transporter.

The stunning 23 minutes of footage, watched by News Corp Australia, was found being passed around rebels in Donetsk before a copy was smuggled out of the rebel-held east Ukraine region and passed to investigators.

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media_camera Disturbing ... What appears to be rebels posing for a picture after the MH17 crash. This picture was not taken from the new video. Picture: Twitter

The revelation comes as the Dutch-led team of investigators yesterday announced the physical reconstruction of the aircraft had now been completed and they would invite families of the 298 victims onboard the aircraft when it was shot down last July, including 38 Australian citizens and residents, to see their progress.

But the next of kin are not likely to be shown graphic footage uncovered recently by investigators as they attempt to determine who was responsible for the shooting down of the aircraft killing all on board.

On the video, the Boeing aircraft is seen still in flames with the person recording the scene on his smart phone filming his colleagues in a state of excitement over the shooting down of what they apparently thought was a Ukraine airforce Antonov transporter plane.

media_camera Disrespectful ... The new footage contradicts claims by the Russian-backed rebels that the crash scene was treated with dignity and bags were not ransacked. Picture: AFP/ Vasily Maximov

Very soon after the start of the filming however, the distinctive Malaysian Airlines upholstery can be seen as the armed troops, in a mix of military fatigues, walk across to the crash and remark that it did not appear to be military.

A debate ensues as each on the scene make a different judgment based on parts of the smoking and at times still burning aircraft, that some claim could not be military.

The footage continues as they go through the luggage of the passengers strewn about the fields, including backpacks specifically marked with travel tags as belonging to Australian passengers at which one exclaims “this says Australia, it’s Australian”.

The footage, panning widely across the whole scene before zooming in, then turns graphic with human remains clearly visible amid smouldering aircraft remnants.

media_camera Chaos ... Witness footage directly after the crash shows residents running around to inspect the scene. Picture: Twitter

The mood of the militia quickly changes to a more sombre tone when the enormity of the incident is apparent although in several scenes in the shaky footage one rebel can be seen wearing the ID card of a flight crew member, as he moved to rummage from luggage bag to luggage bag.

The footage, from which a transcript has been produced, contradicts claims by the Russian-backed rebels that the scene was treated with dignity and bags were not ransacked. It also raises doubts over their claims they had no idea what had occurred but suspected the whole scene to have been a Ukraine plot to bring Western Allies into the then largely civil conflict.

Either by accident or design only a few faces of those at the scene can be seen in the footage but at least one has been identified as a senior figure of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic militia.

media_camera Coming home ... The remains of a victim of the MH17 air disaster are carried in ceremony after arriving by plane at the airport in Eindhoven on February 7, 2015. Picture: AFP/ ANP / Koen Van Weel

Police Investigators, including officers from the Netherlands and from the Australian Federal Police, have declined to comment about the investigation.

The revelation though came as the Dutch Safety Board, leading the air crash side of the investigation looking specifically into the cause and contributing factors of the crash, yesterday confirmed it had concluded a critical phase of their probe.

Meeting at Gilze-Rijen Airbase in the Brabant region of Holland near the Belgian border where parts of the wreckage were taken by road from Ukraine, the investigators had been attempting a partial reconstruction of the fuselage.

This was to establish the type of impact although an earlier report into the incident concluded MH17 was struck by multiple strikes from “high energy from outside the aircraft”, suspected of being a ground-to-air missile.

media_camera Paying their respects ... People stand in line as Ukrainian servicemen load a coffin bearing the remains of a victim of flight MH17. Picture: AFP / Kharkiv City

“In the past week they conducted several investigations on the wreckage, including the fractures, the failure mechanisms and the impact patterns,” a spokesman confirmed. “This meeting is part of the procedures prescribed by the ICAO provisions on international aircraft accident and incident investigation.”

The spokesman said next of kin could see first-hand the recovered wreckage on a date in early March. He revealed the team, involving members from Ukraine, the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, the US, UK and the Russian Federation were also planning to create a three-dimensional reconstruction of the aircraft soon.

Originally published as Sickening new MH17 footage