MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) – A group of 70 international experts and eight monitors arrived on Saturday at the Malaysian passenger plane crash site in eastern Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has said.
“SMM monitors (8) have arrived at #MH17 site w/70 experts + detector dogs. Long day ahead intensive work focused on recovery victim remains,” the organization said in its Twitter microblog.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman announced Friday that a full multinational team of 101 experts investigating the cause of the Malaysian Boeing crash in eastern Ukraine had finally made it to the crash site.
The experts had been unable to reach the destination for four days before they managed to map out an alternative route on July 31.
The team includes 10 experts sent by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), while 53 are from the Netherlands and 38 from Australia.
The deputy head of the OSCE monitoring team, Alexander Hug, said earlier this week that the monitors decided to get to the crash site using other routes amid continuing clashes in the area.
On Friday, the mission used the so-called “northern route.” The members of the trilateral contact group at the meeting in Minsk on Thursday agreed to ensure safety of this route.
Malaysia Airlines MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur went down in Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine on July 17. All 298 people on board, including 85 children and 15 crew members, died in the crash.
Ukrainian authorities lay the blame for shooting down the plane on independence supporters. The latter insist they do not have the means to hit a target flying as high as the airliner was.
