More Remains Discovered At MH17 Crash Site
More remains were discovered at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by international experts examining the site. The team of Dutch and Australian police officers and forensic experts found the remains while looking through the site for only the second time since the crash.
A spokeswoman for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe confirmed Saturday that searcher found human remains. The New York Times notes that the team also recovered remains on Friday, their first full day at the site since the crash more than two weeks ago.
International monitors believe about 80 bodies of the 298 victims remain unaccounted for. Representatives of the Dutch-led recovery mission did not tell reporters what they are searching for or how the human remains were passed over in the initial search.
About 80 experts reached the crash site Saturday, accompanied by monitors from the OSCE. The search for more remains has been complicated by fighting between rebel separatists and the Ukraine government. Fighting reached the outskirts of Donetsk this week, where separatists dug trenches into parks and the landscaped medians of major streets.
Monitors relocated Friday from Donetsk to government-held territory after the government reported surrounding the city. USA Today reports that investigators recovered more human remains after deploying sniffer dogs at the MH17 crash site.
Along with announcing the find, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, the head of the recovery mission, thanked the warring sides for allowing the mission to proceed. He stated, “This is of great importance to the international police officers, the experts and, especially, the victims’ families.”
The remains found this weekend are being transferred to a facility in Kharkiv, Ukraine, by refrigerated truck. Once there, they will be examined by Dutch, Malaysian, and Australian forensic experts, then sent to the Netherlands. More than 200 bodies have already been transferred to the European country after they were collected in a haphazard effort overseen by the rebels. Those remains are in the process of identification.
The international recovery team divided the 14-square-mile crash site into small grids and intends to thoroughly search each one. Friday and Saturday’s search focused on an area around a chicken farm close to the village of Grabovo. Aalbersberg reported that the searchers will move to an area northeast of Roxyspyne, where pieces of the aircraft were found.
It is not clear how many more human remains will be found as the recovery team painstakingly searches all 14 square miles of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 14 crash site.
[Image: TIME]
