BBC News - Ukraine MH17: Air crash team finds human

remains
1 August 2014
Last updated at 19:03 GMT
A team of 70 Dutch and Australian forensic experts has found human remains at the site of the flight
MH17 crash in east Ukraine.
They made their discovery on their first full day of searching at the site, an area of some 35 sq km
(13.5 sq miles) inside the conflict zone.
Local search parties found 227 of the 298 victims earlier and they were flown to the Netherlands for
identification.
Presidents Obama and Putin discussed the crisis by telephone on Friday.
The US president told his Russian counterpart that he was "deeply concerned" over his continuing
support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
Both leaders did, however, agree that continuing fighting in Ukraine was not in the interests of
either country, the Kremlin said.
In the latest violence, 10 Ukrainian soldiers were killed near the MH17 crash site on Thursday.
The fighting between government troops and pro-Russian separatist rebels had previously prevented
the investigators reaching the area.
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 airliner came down on 17 July with the loss of all 298 passengers and
crew, while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Continue reading the main story
The stench of death is still there"
End Quote
Michael Bociurkiw
OSCE spokesman at crash site
After Ukraine's military declared a unilateral one-day suspension of operations against the rebels in
Donetsk region on Thursday, an exploratory visit was made by the forensic experts, followed by the
full deployment on Friday.
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Tom Burridge in Kiev: "Taking control of Donetsk from rebels will be a difficult task"
It is now unclear whether Ukraine's army or separatist forces control the site, as fighting continues
nearby, the BBC's Tom Burridge reports from Kharkiv.
'Stench of death'
The head of the search mission, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, announced that it had completed its first
day of work and had recovered human remains which would be sent to the Netherlands.
He said the mission was moving to a new base in the Donetsk town of Soledar.
The investigators had travelled in 16 vehicles to the crash site, outside the village of Grabove, along
with monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Artillery fire could be heard periodically somewhere in the distance during the work on Friday, AP
news agency reports.
In a tweet, the OSCE said the investigators had been bolstered by "new assets", an apparent
reference to two vans marked with red crosses.
Regional OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw, who visited the site previously, said that despite
reports of tampering with evidence, it looked much the same as when his team had last seen it,
nearly a week ago.
"The stench of death is still there," he he told Boston's NPR news station by phone on Thursday.
Killed or missing
Col Andriy Lysenko, Ukrainian national security spokesman, said troops had been ambushed on
Thursday by rebels defending the town of Shakhtarsk against the army.
Ten soldiers were killed, 11 were missing and 13 were wounded, he said.
The Donetsk rebels' news agency said on Twitter that an "enemy" column had been "repulsed" and
three soldiers from Ukraine's 25th Air Mobile Brigade had been taken prisoner. The rebels say they
destroyed more than 30 vehicles in the ambush.
Graphic amateur video published on YouTube, and dated 31 July, shows a single burning military
vehicle with charred and mangled bodies scattered nearby. The dead soldiers are said to be from the
25th Brigade.
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The BBC's Jonathan Beale: "It's mostly the poor, the helpless and the old that have been left behind"
Talks between a rebel delegation and officials from Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE are to resume
next week in Belarus, the OSCE said in a statement.
In a separate development, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that long-awaited
parliamentary elections will take place in the autumn.
"[Then] there will be a new parliament that will start on reforms," the president said in a televised
interview.
More than 1,500 people are believed to have been killed in the conflict which erupted in east
Ukraine in April, after separatists declared independence from the new government in Kiev.
Russia, which annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March, has been accused of arming the rebels
and has been targeted by US and EU sanctions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28599315