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Poroshenko extends mandate of mission probing into MH17 crash

KIEV, November 10. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has signed a law to ratify (through an exchange of notes) an agreement between Ukraine and the Netherlands to extend until August 1, 2017 the work of the inquiry mission into the Malaysian Flight MH17 airliner crash in Donbass, the presidential press service reports.

"Ratification of this agreement creates necessary legal framework for further activity of the international mission to protect investigation, set up in July of 2014, which will help to complete as soon as possible the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17," it said.

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which brings together specialists from Austria, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, presented on September 28 first preliminary findings of the criminal investigation into the Malaysian airliner’s crash in Donbass.

JIT investigators announced that the plane was downed by a missile launched with the air defense system Buk from the area of the village of Pervomaiskoye, south of Snezhnoye, held by anti-Kiev militias on the day of the tragedy.

A passenger Boeing-777 jet of the Malaysian Airlines (Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur) was shot down over the east of the Donetsk Region on July 17, 2014. All 283 passengers and 15 crew - citizens of ten countries - died in the disaster.