VIENNA , July 22 (RIA Novosti) - OSCE has published a report on the visit of its Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) and the Dutch experts to the site of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash.
“Dutch forensics experts – accompanying the SMM – assessed the storage conditions of bodies on board the train at Torez railway station as good,” the report published on OSCE website Tuesday says. “At the main crash site, all bodies had been removed. The recovery process was assessed by the Dutch forensics experts as good.”
OSCE monitors visited several locations related to the fatal crash of the Malaysian Boeing, including the village of Nikishine, located in about 4 kilometers from the main crash site and not visited by the monitors before.
“The SMM saw multiple pieces of debris of various sizes widely scattered over an area of approximately one square kilometer. There was no evidence of human remains. The site was not guarded,” the report says.
According to the OSCE report, the group consisted of 14 OSCE monitors and was escorted by the representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. The SMM “facilitated access for the Ukrainian National Bureau for Investigations of Air Accidents and Incidents in Civilian Aviation.” Three forensics experts from the Dutch National Forensics Investigation Team – the Landelijk Team Forensische Opsporing (LTFO) – accompanied the group.
The Dutch experts also inspected the refrigerated carriages in the eastern Ukrainian city of Torez and assessed the storage conditions for bodies as good.
“A ‘DPR’ representative informed the SMM that they had thus far collected 282 bodies; the SMM is unable to confirm this number,” the report says.
The train was to leave for the city of Kharkiv on Monday, but due to “the reported shelling of one of the railway stations in Donetsk city during the day” the departure was not possible.
“The ‘DPR’ instead agreed to guard and move the train to a safe location in Donetsk city,” OSCE says in the report.
Earlier today, the train carrying the bodies of the crash victims, arrived in Kharkiv.
The bodies are later to be airlifted to Amsterdam.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, causing death of 283 passengers and 15 crew members.
