Dutch forensic experts have identified 65 people killed in downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, the Dutch government said on Saturday, as the last of the team investigating the crash returned from eastern Ukraine.
Forty-two more victims were identified from remains taken from the crash site of the passenger jet, where an operation to recover passengers’ belongings has been halted because of intensifying clashes between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists.
“Of the victims, 21 were Dutch and the other 21 another nationality,” the Dutch Ministry of Justice said in a statement. “The specific nationalities of the other victims are not being revealed on the request of their countries’ embassies.”
Forensics investigation coordinator Arie de Bruijn said on Friday that about 176 “more or less” complete bodies have arrived in the Netherlands as well as 527 body parts.
“A team of specialists are working around the clock, but again, it could still take months before each victim can be identified,” the Dutch government said.
Meanwhile, the last of the Dutch, Australian and Malaysian investigators were leaving Ukraine for the Netherlands, Dutch news agency ANP reported.
The final flight of returning police investigators was expected to land at the south Netherlands city of Eindhoven late on Saturday night, including the head of the Dutch police mission in Ukraine, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Wednesday that the search for body parts at the crash site was being suspended due to escalating violence in the area. The government on Saturday issued a map showing the area in which the experts conducted their search.
Investigators “searched for 20 hours during a six-day period,” but according to the map, covered only a small area of the sprawling crash site.
“Not all areas have been searched as experts were refused entry or the security risk was too high,” the Dutch government said in a statement.
However, about 800 Ukrainian recovery workers earlier scoured many of the areas that the international team could not get to, the statement added.
“It was done more professionally than first thought, and body parts and personal belongings have been found,” it said.
Flight MH17 exploded over insurgent-held east Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 on board, 193 of them Dutch, with the West accusing Russia-backed separatists of shooting it down.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a telephone call on Saturday that Russian intervention in Ukraine, including for supposed humanitarian purposes, would be “unacceptable” without Kiev’s authorization.
Such a move “violates international law, and will provoke additional consequences,” the White House said in a statement after the telephone call, referencing the numerous economic sanctions already in place against Moscow.
“Any Russian intervention in Ukraine, even under purported ‘humanitarian’ auspices, without the formal, express consent and authorization of the government of Ukraine is unacceptable,” the statement said.
Obama and Merkel also renewed calls for Russia to attempt to find a political solution to the crisis.
Obama had a similar conversation with British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier in the day in which the two leaders agreed such a move would be “unjustified and illegal.”
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov had called for Washington to back a Moscow initiative for a “humanitarian mission” to east Ukraine.
Lavrov had telephoned US Secretary of State John Kerry “to underline the need for urgent measures to avert the imminent humanitarian crisis” there, according to a statement issued by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday.
The West has accused Russia of abetting the insurgency in east Ukraine by supplying it with weapons, an allegation Moscow denies.
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