Heavy shelling around the crash site of downed Malaysia Airways Flight MH17 yesterday forced Dutch and Australian police to scrap a planned visit as they sought to secure the scene 10 days after the disaster.
The unarmed contingent of law enforcement officers were due to head to the location after a deal was struck with rebels aimed at allowing a long-delayed probe into the tragedy to go ahead.
However, international observers overseeing the trip had to abruptly ditch their plans after clashes shattered a supposed truce between government forces and insurgents in the area around the site, where some remains of the 298 victims still lie decomposing under the summer sun.
Photo: Reuters
“There is fighting going on. We can’t take the risk,” said Alexander Hug, deputy chief monitor of the European security body the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) special mission in Ukraine.
“The security situation on the way to the site and on the site itself is unacceptable for our unarmed observer mission,” he told reporters in the insurgent stronghold Donetsk, the biggest city in the region.
An Agence France-Presse photographer heard artillery bombardments just a kilometer from the rebel-held town of Grabove next to the crash site and saw black smoke billowing into the sky.
Terrified local residents were fleeing and checkpoints controlled by separatist fighters were abandoned.
Earlier, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said 49 officers from the Netherlands and Australia — which together lost about 221 citizens in the crash — were due at the scene yesterday and that there would be “considerably more on site in coming days.”
That came after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said he had reached an agreement with the pro-Russian insurgents controlling the site to allow the police deployment.
“I hope that this agreement ... will ensure security on the ground, so the international investigators can conduct their work,” Razak said, adding that 68 Malaysian police personnel would leave Kuala Lumpur for the crash site on Wednesday.
A truce had been called in the immediate area around the site by both the Kiev forces and pro-Russian separatists, but just 60km away, the Ukrainian army had continued with their offensive to retake Donetsk.
The sounds of heavy bombardment — some of it apparently unguided Grad rocket fire — could be heard throughout the night in Donetsk and there were bursts of gunfire in the deserted city center.
The insurgents have also handed over a sealed train carriage filled with victims’ belongings to Dutch authorities, who are leading the probe into the downing of the plane — allegedly by the rebels.
Ignoring safety warnings, an Australian couple traveled to the scene of the crash without any escort on Saturday, saying they were fulfilling a promise to their only child that they would be there.
“She was full of life,” said Angela Rudhart-Dyczynski of their 25-year-old daughter, Fatima, an aerospace engineering student who died when the Amsterdam-to-Kuala Lumpur plane was downed.
Meanwhile in Kiev, lawmakers are to meet this week to discuss Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s future, after the premier quit in fury over the collapse of his coalition.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has insisted on Yatsenyuk’s cooperation until new elections are held.
The Red Cross has said the country is now in a civil war — a classification that would make parties in the conflict liable to prosecution for war crimes.
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