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Over 100 international experts search for Malaysian airliner crash victims

Experts from the Netherlands and Australia have been working at the Boeing airliner crash site for the third consecutive day

VIENNA, August 03, 16:31 /ITAR-TASS/. Over 100 international experts are searching for the bodies of victims from a Malaysian airliner that crashed in the Donetsk Region in east Ukraine, OSCE spokesman Shiv Sharma said on Sunday.

“Today, over 100 experts arrived at the crash site. Their search is concentrated in the area of a field near the town of Rassupnoye,” the OSCE spokesman said.

Experts from the Netherlands and Australia have been working at the Boeing airliner crash site for the third consecutive day with the support of eight employees of the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine. Their task is to search for the bodies of those killed in the air crash and their personal belongings, the OSCE spokesman said.

Sharma also said that self-defense fighters had not allowed experts to use a drone with a camera brought by Dutch specialists for search operations.

International specialists have been daily arriving at the airliner crash site near the settlement of Gabovo, 79 km (49 miles) north of Donetsk, since Thursday, July 31. Before that, they had not been able to carry out their search operation for a week over incessant fighting between the local self-defense militia and pro-Kiev troops.

The search resumed after the warring sides agreed on a ceasefire around the airliner wreckage area and a security corridor for the arrival of experts and their work at the crash site.

The OSCE has not reported about any incidents in the search operation and said that international experts have been able to cross the territories controlled by self-defense fighters and pro-Kiev troops fairly safely.

A Boeing 777 of the Malaysia Airlines (flight MH17) en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Region 60 km from the Russian border, in the zone of combat operations between the Donetsk self-defense forces and the Ukrainian army. All the passengers and crewmembers onboard the plane - 298 people - died. Most of the passengers - 196 people - were Dutch citizens.

Over 200 bodies were found during the first few days after the airliner crash.