MH17: International investigation efforts hampered by fighting on boundary of search zone as remains of victims flown to Netherlands

Updated

Australia's head of the MH17 recovery mission, Angus Houston, says fighting on the boundary of the search zone has forced investigators to abandon their latest recovery efforts.

Retired Air Chief Marshal Houston said the military action between Ukrainian forces and rebels meant the search team spent less than two hours at the crash site on Monday (local time).

But he said they were able to gather some more personal effects of MH17 victims, adding to those flown to the Netherlands on Monday in a coffin along with remains.

"The reality is that we're working in an environment where there's conflict going on around us, and as we've said many times, it's fluid, the environment is fluid, and today, that military activity was on the boundary of the crash site," he said.

Air Chief Marshal Houston said while investigators were significantly slowed by the military activity, they were not in immediate danger and that monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) ensured safe passage for the international team.

"The targeting was well to the west of where we were operating, and whilst some of the noise was quite close, certainly at the beginning of the day, the fall of [the] shot was a long, long way from our location," he said.

Air Chief Marshal Houston says the Australian investigation team will remain in Ukraine for as long as is necessary.

"We still have got a job to do. We're very focused on our humanitarian mission," he said.

"We want to recover as many of the remains, all of the remains that we can, and we will stay here as long as that takes, provided the conflict situation allows it."

Malaysian experts joined Dutch and Australian police for the first time as they continued combing the area for traces of the victims.

Over 100 investigators from the Netherlands, Australia and Malaysia searched with sniffer dogs in and around the village of Petropavlivka, recovering personal belongings from the crash site including photo albums and passports.

Remains recovered from the site were collected into a coffin along with DNA and belongings that had been kept in the rebel-held city of Donetsk for some time.

A Dutch military transport plane carried the coffin from Kharkiv in Ukraine's north-east to Eindhoven in the Netherlands on Monday.

Before that flight, 227 coffins carrying remains of some of the 298 victims had been taken to the Netherlands for the painstaking identification process.

Ukraine, Russia in discussions over soldiers who crossed border

Meanwhile, Ukraine said it was in talks with Moscow over the return of 311 Ukrainian soldiers and border guards who had been forced by fighting with separatists to cross into Russia, but Russian border authorities said the troops were seeking asylum.

Both sides seem set to use the fate of the troops to score propaganda points as Ukrainian government forces extended steady gains it has made against the pro-Russian separatists since MH17 was downed on July 17.

Ukrainian defence spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the soldiers had retreated into Russia for safety reasons after helping their comrades break through rebel lines.

Russian authorities acknowledged the troops had crossed the border, though they put the number at 438 and that many were seeking asylum.

"They were tired of the war and wanted no further part in it," Vasily Malayev, spokesman for the border guards in the Rostov region of Russia, said. However, he added that 180 would be returned to Ukraine.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would facilitate the return of the soldiers but suggested they would be vulnerable to prosecution for desertion once they returned home.

"I expect Ukrainian authorities to understand that it is absolutely unacceptable, when Ukrainians ... are forced to fight with their own people, to treat those who refuse to do so as traitors to the motherland," Mr Lavrov said.

ABC/wires

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, disasters-and-accidents, terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, law-crime-and-justice, ukraine, russian-federation

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