Channel 4 News Menu
22 Jul 2014

Investigators comb MH17 crash site, surrounded by rebels

Europe Editor and Presenter

Just three investigators from Malaysian Airlines are on site in eastern Ukraine looking through the wreckage of the downed plane MH17, as the black boxes head for British experts.

The Malaysian Airlines team has to cover an area of nine square miles, which is how far the wreckage of the disaster was spread when Flight MH17 fell out of the sky on Thursday, killing 298 people.

Surrounded by volatile pro-Russian rebels – the very people accused of shooting down the plane in the first place – the investigators look nervous, and fair enough. They have a large and difficult task ahead, and as they began, loud explosions were heard on the outskirts of Donetsk, some 40 miles from the site.

Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed leader of the breakaway Donetsk region, Alexander Borodai, posed with MH17’s flight recorders or black boxes, as he handed them over to international authorities. The recorders will now be sent to Britain for further investigation.

Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: “We’ve agreed Dutch request for air accident investigators at Farnborough to retrieve data from #MH17 black boxes for international analysis.”

The United States said that it had still not seen the level of co-operation expected for international investigators at the site of the MH17 crash. However, the international community did welcome the news that the bodies of the plane crash victims will be flown to the Netherlands on Wednesday, although the Dutch prime minister has warned that identifying them could take weeks or even months. It remains unclear whether any bodies remain at the site of the crash or if all have been recovered.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the next step for the Dutch was leading the investigation into the crash, at the request of the Ukrainian government.

“Our next priority is investigating the cause of the disaster. We will leave no stone unturned,” he said. The Netherlands lost at least 173 people in the disaster.

The developments in Ukraine come as the EU continues to discuss further sanctions on Russia over its role in causing the crash – but opinion is split over how far the politicians have actually gone.

Topics

,,, , ,