MH17 crash: Forensic experts find human remains at crash site

Dutch and Australian forensic experts have found human remains at the site of the flight MH17 crash in east Ukraine.

They made their discovery on their first full day of searching at the site, an area of some 13.5 sq miles inside the conflict zone.

Local search parties found 227 of the 298 victims earlier and they were flown to the Netherlands for identification.

Fighting still rages, with 10 Ukrainian soldiers killed nearby on Thursday.

The fighting between government troops and pro-Russian separatist rebels had previously prevented the investigators reaching the area.

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 airliner came down on July 17 with the loss of all 298 passengers and crew, while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

After Ukraine’s military declared a unilateral one-day suspension of operations against the rebels in Donetsk region on Thursday, an exploratory visit was made by the forensic experts, followed by the full deployment on Friday.

It is now unclear whether Ukraine’s army or separatist forces control the site, as fighting continues nearby.

The head of the search mission, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, announced that it had completed its first day of work and had recovered human remains which would be sent to the Netherlands.

He said the mission was moving to a new base in the Donetsk town of Soledar.

The investigators had travelled in 16 vehicles to the crash site, outside the village of Grabove, along with monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Artillery fire could be heard periodically somewhere in the distance during the work on Friday, AP news agency reports.