MOSCOW, July 19 (RIA Novosti) - Kiev's authorities and militia forces operating in eastern Ukraine agreed to create a security zone around the Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 crash site, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said Saturday.
"The trilateral talks resulted in 20 square kilometers [7.7 square miles] for Ukraine to complete its humanitarian mission, take out the bodies, transfer them to relatives. For that, there are 20 square kilometers in a specified district, and we hope the terrorist will let us work. The tripartite group includes Russian representatives," Nalyvaichenko was quoted as saying by UNIAN news agency.
The group discussed a humanitarian ceasefire for the investigation of the accident Friday. The contact group involving Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held a video conference with the independence supporters, who promised to provide the OSCE observers with unrestricted access to the site.
The authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) said their militia overlooked the crash site.
"The whole area with the remains of the plane and the bodies of the dead passengers has been roped off by our militia hours after the tragedy in order to ensure the inviolability of the accident scene for an objective investigation, as well as to guarantee the security of the experts, who must do everything possible to determine the cause of the accident," DPR’s Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Purgin said in a statement Saturday.
DPR's Defense Ministry has allocated "more than enough force and resources to fulfil the tasks in the area of the plane crash," he added.
Although Ukrainian authorities said Friday they closed the airspace above the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, a RIA Novosti correspondent said Saturday military planes were still flying above the crash site.
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed near the town of Torez in the Donetsk Region on Thursday, killing all the 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. The cause of the accident has not been determined so far.
Kiev blamed independence supporters in the turbulent Donetsk Region for downing the passenger plane with a surface-to-air missile. The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic said local militia did not have the required technologies to shoot as high as 10,000 meters (33,000 feet) in the air.
