Ukraine unable to ensure safe access to Boeing crash site — Malaysian transport minister
Liow Tiong Lai added that only a group of specialists from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) managed to get to the site of the tragedy so far
KUALA LUMPUR, July 21. /ITAR-TASS/. Malaysia demands immediate and unhampered access of specialists to the passenger airliner’s crash site, Star newspaper has quoted Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai who is currently on a visit in Ukraine’s capital Kiev on Monday.
“The Ukrainian government has stated that it has been unable to establish a safe corridor to the crash site for the international team… and it can't guarantee the safety of the international team in and around the crash site,” Liow said. Kiev authorities assured the Malaysian minister that militias were fully in control of the airliner’s crash site. He added that only a group of specialists from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) managed to get to the site of the tragedy so far.
A group of 113 experts from Malaysia arrived to Kiev last Saturday. Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman is also expected to come to the Ukrainian capital to meet President Petro Poroshenko and Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak demanded earlier to bring the bodies of Malaysian air crash victims to homeland immediately. Two military transport airplanes S-130 Hercules will fly to Kuala-Lumpur for the purpose.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 passenger airliner on flight MH17 from the Dutch city of Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur crashed in east Ukraine’s Donetsk region on July 17. All 298 people abroad the airliner died in the air crash. The air carrier stated that citizens of Malaysia, the Netherlands, Australia, Indonesia, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines, Canada and New Zealand are among casualties.
Detectives are probing different versions of this tragedy, including the one under which the airliner had been downed by a surface-to-air missile.
This is already the second crash of Malaysia Airlines airplanes for the last five months. March 8, 2014, Boeing-777 with 239 people aboard en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared from radar screens and is not found yet.