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July 22, 2014

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Investigators given access to remains of victims of MH17

FIGHTING flared in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk yesterday as investigators began to inspect the bodies of victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 last week.

International inspectors got access to the remains of hundreds of victims stored in refrigerated railway wagons near the crash site.

The government in Kiev denied sending the regular army into the center of Donetsk, which pro-Russia militias captured in April, but said small “self-organized” pro-Ukrainian groups were fighting the rebels in the city.

Four people were killed in clashes yesterday, health officials said.

Against a background of horror over the fate of the remains of the 298 victims of the Malaysia Airlines disaster, the first international investigators reached eastern Ukraine yesterday.

Three members of a Dutch disaster victims identification team arrived at a railway station near the crash site where rebels say 247 bodies have been stored in refrigerated wagons. About two-thirds of the crash victims were Dutch.

The head of the team inspected the storage of the bodies in the rail cars and, despite an overwhelming stench of decomposition when the doors were opened, said it was fine.

“The storage of the bodies is of good quality,” said Peter van Vliet, whose team went through the wagons dressed in surgical masks and rubber gloves.

Van Vliet said he had been told the train would be leaving the station at Torez later yesterday so that bodies can be taken to where they can be identified and repatriated. He could not say where it was going.

Ukrainian officials said that as of yesterday morning 272 bodies and 66 fragments of bodies had been found.

The shooting down of the airliner last Thursday has sharply deepened the Ukrainian crisis, in which rebels in the Russian-speaking east have been fighting government forces since protesters in Kiev forced out a pro-Moscow president and Russia annexed Crimea in March.

The United States and its allies have blamed the pro-Russian rebels for downing of the plane.

Russia’s defense ministry challenged accusations that pro-Russia separatists were responsible for shooting down the airliner and said Ukrainian warplanes had flown close to it.

The ministry also rejected accusations that Russia had supplied the rebels with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems — the weapon said by Kiev and the West to have downed the airliner — “or any other weapons.”

Television images of the rebel-controlled crash site, where the remains of victims had lain decomposing in fields among their personal belongings, have turned initial shock and sorrow after Thursday’s disaster into anger.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time about the disaster. At least 27 Australians were on the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Abbott said an Australian team was in Kiev but had been unable to reach the site. He said there had been some improvement with the Ukrainian government offering access.

“But there’s still a hell of a long way to go before anyone could be satisfied with the way that site is being treated,” Abbott said. “It’s more like a garden cleanup than a forensic investigation. This is completely unacceptable.”

Emotions ran high in the Netherlands, where prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation and Prime Minister Mark Rutte told parliament his government’s priority was to recover and identify the bodies of the passengers.

“It is clear Russia must use her influence on the separatists to improve the situation on the ground,” Rutte said.

“If in the coming days access to the disaster area remains inadequate, then all political, economic and financial options are on the table against those who are responsible for that,” he said.

Putin said the downing of the airliner must not be used for political ends and urged rebels to allow international experts access to the crash site.




 

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