More Hope for Kin of MH 17 Victims as Probe Team Recovers More Human Remains From Crash Site
More human remains and personal belongings of the MH 17 plane wreckage have been recovered from crash site in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. This was announced by the team head Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg in Kiev, reported cbc. ca Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 was shot down above the village of Hrabove on July 17 killing all the 298 passengers and crew.
The newly recovered remains are being transferred by a refrigerated truck to a facility in Kharkiv. There it will be examined by forensic experts before sending to Netherlands to join the 200 bodies already despatched for identification.
Aalbersberg's team has been searching for decomposing remains of approximately 80 victims in an area of 20 square kilometers. The process is expected to take weeks.
Relief for Families
The investigators travelled in 16 vehicles to the crash site outside the village Grabove. They were accompanied by monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE in a tweet said the investigators had been bolstered by the new recovery of human remains.
The families of the victims had been anxiously waiting for investigators to arrive at the scene. Many of them believed that human remains are still stuck at the crash site.
Reports of a CNN team that managed to reach the crash site had given credence to the claim that more bodies are to be recovered from the crash site. They found broken pieces of luggage, travel books, a pair of blue jeans and parts of the plane riddled with holes. All these were lying scattered across a field full of grass and wildflowers.
Russia says sanctions will boomerang
Meanwhile Chizhov, the Russian Ambassador to European Union told Euro News that sanctions slapped on Russia by the EU and US will only boomerang on the economies of these countries.
Hopes had dimmed when head of the Dutch and Australian team on the first day of the visit said they did not see any bodies at the crash site. But they promised intensive search at the area again for possible human remains and belongings. The Twitter feed of the OSCE also sounded positive about the outcome of the International team's search at the MH 17 crash site in eastern Ukraine.