Ongoing combat operations in the area are preventing investigators from reaching the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk.
Dutch police said yesterday that the armed conflict between Ukrainian military forces and pro-Russian separatist rebels in the area makes it unlikely that recovery and security teams would be able to access the site where the Boeing 777 jetliner crash landed.
The Malay Mail Online reports that Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, head of the Dutch recovery mission in Ukraine, said 68 Malaysian experts and police officers were expected to join his group in Kiev today.
From Kiev, Aalbersberg said the Malaysian team will travel to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, closer to the crash site.
“Unfortunately, we don’t expect the security situation to improve enough over the next few days,” Aalbersberg told reporters in Kiev.
“This makes it less likely that we will reach the crash site in the immediate future. There is still too much fighting in the area,” he said.
Aalbersberg added that his team had to abort plans to visit the site yesterday with Australian police and monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
“Tomorrow we will try again from Donetsk,” the rebel bastion in east Ukraine where the international mission is stationed, he said.
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