THE HAGUE, November 16. /TASS/. Fragments of the Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH17 that crashed in eastern Ukraine in July have been partially loaded onto railway cars in Ukraine’s town of Torez, the Dutch government said on Sunday.
The first fragments have already been taken to Torez from the crash site and loaded onto railway cars. Later on, the wreckage will be taken to Kharkov, from where the fragments will be delivered to the Netherlands.
The Dutch security council initiated the operation to recover remaining fragments of the crashed plane in a bid to reconstruct a parts of the Boeing in order to ascertain the cause of the crash. It will take several days to complete the operation at the crash area. If security situation affords, collection of fragments will be continued on Monday.
Along with fragments of the plane, Dutch inspectors recovered human remains and personal belongings. Apart from that, the head of the Grabovo settlement handed over personal belongings of the passengers of the ill-fated plane, including passports and bank cards that had been found by local residents.
The human remains and personal belonging will undergo initial forensic study in Kharkov to be later sent to the Netherlands.
The Boeing 777-200 of the Malaysia Airlines en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Region, some 60 km (over 37 miles) 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 aircraft - 298 people - died. Most of the passengers - 196 people - were Dutch citizens.
The work on removing wreckage of the airplane became possible after representatives of the Netherlands, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic /DPR/ signed a relevant protocol on Saturday, November 15. Before that, the Dutch side refused to sign the document claiming it did not support some of the provisions in it.