Two planes with 51 containers carrying bodies and body fragments of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash victims are to leave Kharkiv for Eindhoven (the Netherlands) on July 24, the press service of Ukraine's Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Ministry reported with reference to the Ukrainian state commission investigating the crash.
“A group of international experts, including those from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, continue examining the bodies of the victims at the [Kharkiv-based] Malyshev plant now and preparing them for transportation to the Netherlands under agreements between Ukraine and all the countries whose citizens were tragically killed in the terrible plane crash,” a statement posted on the government’s Web site on July 24 reads.
As was reported, two military transport planes with 56 bodies of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash victims arrived in Eindhoven from Kharkiv on Wednesday.
A Dutch Hercules C-130 plane with the remains of 16 bodies left for Eindhoven at around noon local time (1300 GMT), and an hour later an Australian C-17 Globemaster with 40 bodies on board followed it.
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed near the village of Hrabove, Shakhtarsk district, Donetsk region, on July 17. There were 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers on board the plane. All were killed.
According to the airlines, the victims list included 192 Dutch nationals, one of them being also a U.S. citizen, 44 Malaysian citizens, among them 15 crewmembers, 27 Australians, 12 citizens of Indonesia, ten Britons, one of them being also a South African, as well as four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos, one Canadian, and one citizen of New Zealand.
A total of 282 bodies and 87 fragments of 16 victims’ bodies were found at the crash site as of July 21, when the search operation was over. The Security Service of Ukraine opened a criminal proceeding under Article “Terrorist Act.”
