Donetsk - A working group investigating the crash of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 in Ukraine has reached a preliminary consensus on evacuating the bodies of the crash victims from the site to Mariupol, a city in the Donetsk region controlled by Ukrainian government forces, Andriy Purhin, who represents the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in the group, told Interfax on Friday.
“The working option is that the remains will be put into refrigerator railcars and delivered to Mariupol, where relatives of the victims could identify them,” Purhin said.
He said it was premature to say when exactly these procedures could be arranged.
“We are waiting for an international investigative team to be finally put together,” he said.
The crash scene was visited earlier on Friday by Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers and technical specialists from Ukraine, Purhin said. Malaysian and Dutch experts have not yet arrived, he said.
The DPR has been obliged to ensure safe work of foreign specialists and their movements around territories controlled by the self-proclaimed authorities and also to guard the jetliner crash area, Purhin said.
“We are ready to comply with these obligations,” he said.
The Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur went down near the town of Torez in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists. Mariupol is under the Ukrainian government forces’ control, and the Donetsk regional administration is provisionally located there at the moment.
