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Work to recover MH17 wreckage suspended after human remains found — ministry

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was brought down in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board

DONETSK, November 7. /TASS/. Work to recover the wreckage of doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 has been suspended after investigators have found more human remains at the crash site in eastern Ukraine, the Transport Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said on Friday.

“Several bodies of victims were found there yesterday. It was therefore decided to temporarily suspend work to remove the plane’s wreckage,” spokeswoman Ella Zhuranskaya told TASS. “Dutch investigators, representatives of our republic’s emergencies and transport ministries, and OSCE observers are expected to arrive at the crash site on Sunday, November 9, to continue inspecting the site where the Boeing crashed,” she said.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was brought down in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board, including 193 Dutch nationals. So far, 289 victims have been identified.

The Dutch Safety Board, leading the investigation and coordinating the international team of investigators, said in its preliminary report in early September that “flight MH17 with a Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside."