Local authorities in eastern Ukraine collected new human remains of victims of the MH17 flight disaster, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice announced on Friday.
Mortal remains and personal belongings were found in the vicinity of a burned site, a location where large fire has raged, near Hrabove, where flight MH17 came down. The mayors of the surrounding districts have collected all material and safely secured it over the past few months.
Currently, an eight-person Dutch team from the ministry of defense, the police and the ministry of foreign affairs, is in Ukraine for the first hand-over of the remains, personal belongings, and to collect parts of the crashed aircraft.
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 people on board died, of which 296 have been identified.
In April this year, the Dutch-led repatriation mission in eastern Ukraine came to end, but the Dutch team left with the agreement that inhabitants of the villages around the disaster area would continue to hand in items.
May 2 was the last flight with human remains to arrive at Eindhoven Air Base. With these latest human remains gathered in April, the last two unidentified victims could not be identified.
Since the identification process has been largely completed, the Dutch embassy in Kiev will take care of transport of the new findings to Kharkiv, and from Kharkiv these items will come to the Netherlands.
Staff from the national forensic investigation team will bring the human remains on a scheduled flight to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for identification in the Netherlands.
Members of the military police will take care of a ceremonial reception out of sight of the media, contrary to the large ceremonial tribute for the previous flights to Eindhoven. The families of the two victims who have not yet been identified have been invited to attend this ceremony.
