DONETSK, Ukraine: Dutch and Australian experts finally arrived at the site of downed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in east Ukraine yesterday, after clashes between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian rebels killed 14 combatants.
The 70 police investigators “will conduct search operations in several places at the crash site,” a Dutch government statement said.
Any remains found of the 298 people who died in the tragedy would be recovered, it added.
The mission is tasked with launching an international probe into the downing two weeks ago of the airliner.
Fighting and rebel restrictions to the site had prevented the investigation getting under way before now.
Although the Dutch and Australian officers made it there Friday, Ukraine’s months-long conflict still raged around the zone.
The Ukrainian military said an overnight ambush by insurgents in Shakhtarsk, a town 25 kilometres from the impact site, left 14 people dead, including at least 10 soldiers.
The clash broke a brief lull that had reigned around the site.
“In total it is known that 14 people died but the bodies of four of them have not been identified and could be Ukrainian soldiers or terrorists,” military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky told AFP.
Both rebels and Kiev have vowed to secure a circuitous access corridor to the location traced by scouts from the international team Thursday.
Ukraine’s army has pledged not to fight in the immediate vicinity of the insurgent-held site.
But elsewhere around the region government forces relaunched their brutal offensive to oust the separatists, ending a “day of quiet” that had brought a brief pause to over three months of fighting that has cost the lives of more than 1,100 people on the ground.
The military said that it had made fresh gains by taking the village of Novyi Svit, some 25 kilometres southeast of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, and was waging operations to secure the volatile border with Russia.
Fighting also flared in Donetsk, a rebel-held city that serves as the base for the international police and journalists trying to reach the MH17 site some 60 kilometres away, with local authorities saying one civilian died after a minibus taxi was hit by mortar shrapnel.
In the second rebel bastion of Lugansk, officials said five civilians were killed and nine injured due to clashes over the past 24 hours. — AFP