MOSCOW, October 13 (RIA Novosti) - Ukrainian search groups will examine the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in order to collect the remains of the bodies and personal belongings and to hand them over to the Dutch side, Reuters has reported citing Dutch television.
Dutch and Ukrainian officials have reportedly reached an agreement on the search teams to start their work on the site on Monday. Ukrainian authorities will then transfer the findings to a Dutch team in the town of Kharkiv.
Dutch forensics are said to have identified 272 victims out of the total 298 people that were on board of the Malaysian aircraft.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine on July 17. The official cause of the tragedy is still unclear.
On September 9, the Dutch Safety Board issued a preliminary report on the crash, saying that the plane broke up in mid-air as the result of structural damage, caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from the outside. A full report should be expected within a year.
The Ukrainian government placed the blame for the downing of the aircraft on independence supporters of the eastern regions, but the latter said they did not have weapons, capable of bringing down an aircraft flying so high.
