Dutch experts & Ukrainian Specialists to arrive at MH17 Crash site today

DONETSK, July 21 — Three Dutch experts and Ukrainian specialists will arrive on Monday at the site of the Malaysian Boeing-777 crash near the town of Torez in eastern Ukraine, Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Andrei Purgin told Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency on Monday.

He said that the experts will be accompanied by the republic’s militia.

He said that foreign specialists had been welcomed near Donetsk and that they would be taken to the site bypassing the city.

Apart from that, Itar-Tass said that Purgin reassured that the Donetsk militia guaranteed security for foreign specialists working at the crash site.

“There is a real world where specialists work routinely and there is a world of Ukrainian and Western media where we (are) persistently seeking to hamper everyone,” Itar-Tass quoted him as saying.

He also said that 12 experts from Malaysia were expected to arrive on Monday.

“Within the day, 12 specialists from Malaysia will come to Donetsk. Some of them will go to Kharkov where genetic expertise will be conducted. I hope we will be through with all the works by the evening and at night the train [with a refrigerator car holding the bodies of the crash victims] and experts will set off for Kharkov,” Itar-Tass quoted Purgin as saying.When asked about the situation in Donetsk, he said fierce fighting was underway near the airport. “A tank column is attempting to force its way from the airport in the direction of the railway terminal. There is heavy fire there, sounds of explosions are distinctly heard even in the centre of the city,” he said.

Late Sunday, Sergei Kavtaradze, the chairman of the Donetsk Republic’s Security Council, told Itar-Tass that rescue teams had found the bodies of 247 out of 298 victims of the Malaysian Boeing-777 crash.

He also said that devices resembling flight recorders had been found at the crash site and taken to Donetsk.

“We are ready to hand them over to experts from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) who, I hope, will arrive here soon,” he said.

The Boeing-777 Malaysia Airlines fight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on Thursday in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Region 60 km from the Russian border, in the zone of combat operation between the Donetsk self-defence forces and the Ukrainian army.

All the 298 passengers and crew members onboard the plane died. Travelling aboard the plane were citizens of ten countries, including 192 Dutchmen, 27 Australian citizens, 10 British nationals and 44 Malaysians (including 15 crew and two infants).

— BERNAMA