All news

Netherlands granted free access to Boeing crash site for own investigation

Dutch criminal experts have been sent to Ukraine to assist the investigation and take part in the identification of the victims’ remains

THE HAGUE, July 18. /ITAR-TASS/. The Netherlands has been granted unimpeded access to the Malayisan Boeing crash site in order to conduct its own investigation, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said on Friday.

According to him, it is necessary to conduct an objective investigation and find out what caused the crash. The minister stressed in a statement that Dutch criminal experts have been sent to Ukraine to assist the investigation and take part in the identification of the victims’ remains.

“I have talked to my Ukrainian colleague Pavlo Klimkin, and we agreed that our experts will get unimpeded and safe access to the crash site,” Timmermans said, adding that support was needed from all the parties involved.

The Foreign Ministry has also opened a telephone hotline and created crisis management headquarters to provide necessary assistance to the relatives of the crash victims. Additional personnel have been sent to Kiev with the same purposes.

The Boeing 777 plane of Malaysia Airlines that was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur disappeared from the radars and fell in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in the area of the Grabovo settlement on Thursday evening. The airliner carried 298 people, including 154 citizens of the Netherlands. All of them were killed in the crash.