You're reading: Australian Foreign Minister: First group of international experts reaches Malaysian Boeing crash site in Donetsk region

The first group of experts from Australia and the Netherlands has been able to get to the crash site of the Malaysian Boeing 777 in Donetsk region, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said.

“Great news as Dutch-Aussie advance-party of experts have just made
it on to MH17 crash site. At last work begins to bring our people home,”
she wrote on Twitter on Thursday, July 31.

At the first stage experts from the Netherlands and Australia are
expected to engage in the recovery of the remains and personal
belongings of those who were killed in the crash.

Earlier, monitors of the OSCE special monitoring mission said on
Twitter that together with experts from Australia and the Netherlands
they were on their way to the Boeing 777 crash site via a new route.

Ukrainian Minister of Regional Development and head of the state
commission of inquiry into the crash Volodymyr Hroisman was quoted as
saying by the ministry’s press service that insurgents had not allowed
the OSCE’s experts to access the Flight MH17 crash site.

The international investigators have been unable to access the Boeing 777 crash since the start of this week.

The Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on a flight from Amsterdam and
Kuala Lumpur crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298
people onboard.