KIEV, July 31 (RIA Novosti) – The so-called Ukrainian contact group agreed on Thursday to cease hostilities along an access route to the Malaysian plane crash site in East Ukraine established earlier by international inspectors, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman said.
The group, consisting of representatives of Kiev authorities and independence supporters in East Ukraine with the participation of OSCE and Russian officials, met earlier on Thursday in Belarusian capital, Minsk, to discuss the crash investigation.
“A decision has been made in the framework of this group that all hostilities along the corridor, established earlier today by OSCE officials and partners from the Netherlands and Australia, will be ceased,” Hroisman, who leads the Ukrainian investigation of the crash, told reporters in Kiev.
Malaysia Airlines MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur went down in Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine on July 17. All 298 people on board, including 85 children and 15 crew members, died in the crash.
A team of international investigators reached the crash zone on Thursday for the first time in a week as previous attempts have been hampered by continuing military action in the area.
Hroisman said that at 4:30 GMT a team of international inspectors from Austria and the Netherlands, accompanied by OSCE monitors, left the city of Yasynuvata 25 km away from Donetsk and travelled across a militia-held territory all the way to the crash site near the town of Torez.
“They reached the site, worked in the area for a limited period of time and were on their way back at 4 p.m. [13:00 GMT],” the Ukrainian deputy prime minister said.
When approaching the crash area, the convoy came under a mortar fire, a RIA Novosti correspondent on the ground said earlier. This was also confirmed by Volodymyr Hroisman.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko earlier promised to stop attacks in the area, but fighting intensified as Ukrainian authorities said they wanted to “cleanse” the area from self-defense forces.
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin previously told the UN Security Council that Ukraine had violated its commitment to cease military activity in the zone around the crash site, while Australian Prime Minister said “it's not just the separatists, it’s the Ukrainian government as well" that were fighting in the area.
