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Ban Ki-Moon

Teams find human remains at Ukraine crash site

Amanda Horowitz
USATODAY
Australian and Dutch investigators examine a piece of debris of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 plane, near the village of Hrabove, Ukraine on Aug. 1, 2014.

In their first full day at the crash site in eastern Ukraine of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a team of international observers and forensics experts found human remains among the widely scattered wreckage.

The 60-person team, led by the Office of Cooperation and Security in Europe, included Dutch and Australian forensics and aviation experts. An advance team had reached the site Thursday near the village of Hrabove after two frustrating weeks of delays.

Foreign observers have been hampered by fighting around the 13-square-mile crash site area that is largely controlled by Russian -backed separatists.

Members of the team recovered DNA samples from 25 victims and personal items belonging to more than two dozen.

"The team has finished its work for today. They found and recovered human remains. They will ... be brought back to the Netherlands for identification," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in the Netherlands, according to Reuters. "The security situation at the site is unstable and unpredictable."

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was downed on July 17 by what U.S. and Ukrainian officials say was a surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by the separatists. All 298 people aboard were killed. Separatists and Russia have denied responsibility for the shootdown.

Local search parties recovered more than 200 bodies during the first few days after the crash and sent the remains to Amsterdam. Citizens of The Netherlands and Australia accounted for most of the deaths from MH17, which was en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam.

Teams are still looking for the remains of as many as 80 people whose bodies have been lying in the fields for more than two weeks.

Because of fighting in the area, the OSCE team took a circuitous route, approaching the huge crash site from territory controlled by Ukrainian troops.

Despite attempts by the United Nations to impose a ceasefire in the immediate vicinity, clashes have continued nearby.

Early Friday, near the town of Shakhtarsk., pro-Russian rebels ambushed a convoy of Ukrainian paratroopers, killing 10 soldiers and wounding 13, according to a Ukrainian military spokesman. Eleven others are unaccounted for .

Ukraine security spokesman Vladislav Seleznev said the attack took place at 6 a.m., before the end of the 24-hour "day of quiet" declared by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Contributing: Associated Press

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