Hopes for retrieval of final MH17 victims as Ukraine frontline moves in renewed fighting

Dutch-led investigators hope to retrieve the remains of the final two victims of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 disaster, after the frontline finally moved away from a battlefield where part of the airliner crashed nine months ago.

Thirty Dutch, Australian and Malaysian experts investigating the downing of MH17 are expected to head to a new search area near the village of Petropavlivka after recent changes to the front line.

The area, where investigators believe they will find the bodies of the only two victims still unaccounted for, was previously too dangerous to access, Theo ten Haaf, an air force commander in charge of security, told Reuters. It is understood to still be heavily mined.

Malaysian airlines flight 17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpa when it was destroyed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board, including 10 Britons.

It was the worst single loss of civilian life in the conflict to date, and Dutch investigators say they are looking at it as a potential war crime.

Western governments believe the airliner was shot down by separatists who thought they were targeting a Ukrainian military aircraft. Separatist leaders and Russian officials have vigorously denied that suggestion, saying it was shot down by a Ukrainian jet.

The conflict in east Ukraine erupted on year ago this week, when a group of gunmen led by Igor Strelkov, a former Russian intelligence colonel, seized the police station, secret service building, and town hall in Slavyansk on April 12.

Supported by irregular civilian volunteers, Mr Strelkov's men deposed the mayor, barricaded the roads into town, and declared allegiance to the Donetsk People's Republic, at that time a haphazard and chaotic pro-Russian movement occupying the regional administration headquarters in Donetsk, the regional capital 60 miles away.

Building seizures in several more towns in the following days led to open warfare between pro-Russian and Ukrainian forces that has killed at least 6,108 people displaced 1.2 million more, according to United Nations estimates.

The conflict has caused the deepest crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. Western governments accuse Moscow of sustaining the separatists with supplies of weapons, ammunition, and troops.

Thursday 16 April 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11540572/Hopes-for-retrieval-of-final-MH17-victims-as-Ukraine-frontline-moves-in-renewed-fighting.html