MH17 crash site chaotic: Australia PM

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the crash site of a Malaysian airliner downed in eastern Ukraine is chaotic.

Abbott made the remark on Sunday as several attempts by investigators to reach the area were hampered. 

On July 17, Malaysian Airline flight MH17, which was travelling to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, crashed killing all 298 people on board.

There is speculation that the Boeing 777 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while flying 33,000 feet over Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine and its Western allies have laid the blame on pro-Russians in the east of the country, who have denied any involvement. Kiev also pointed the blaming finger at Moscow for helping pro-Russia forces destroy evidence at the crash site.

Some 28 of the passengers on board the ill-fated plane were Australian nationals. Abbott said recovering their bodies was a priority.

“The difficulty is that site is chaotic, it’s absolutely chaotic. The kinds of things that would normally be happening in an air crash site are not happening,” he said.

Australia has pushed for an impartial probe into the incident, but Abbott noted that the difficult point was that there was “no one in authority, in charge, on the ground.”

The Australian premier further noted that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had asked Canberra to “fully participate” in the probe and be part of the body recovery operation.

On Friday, some 30 monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) failed in gaining access to the crash site after opposition from pro-Russians a day earlier.

Later on Saturday, however, Ukrainian authorities and the pro-Russians in the east agreed to a 20-kilometer safe zone, which will allow a team of experts to identify the bodies and hand them over to their relatives.

SAB/HJL

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/20/372028/mh17-crash-site-chaotic-australia-pm/

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