Australia ready to deploy police to secure site

The deployment of an international police force to secure the MH17 crash site in Ukraine is moving closer, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday, with 50 Australian officers on standby in London.

Abbott said the situation in eastern Ukraine was “more permissive it seems than it has been” and Canberra was ready to send police to the rebel-held territory as part of a Dutch-led investigation into the Malaysia Airlines crash.

“We are ready to deploy Australian police to Ukraine to help secure the site as part of an international team under United Nations authority,” he said.

Abbott reiterated that there was still a need for a rigorous search of the debris zone to retrieve more victims’ remains.

“On the site it is still clear that nothing is happening without the approval of the armed rebels who brought the plane down in the first place,” he said.

“There has still not been anything like a thorough professional search of the area where the plane went down, and there can’t be while the site is controlled by armed men with vested interest in the outcome of the investigation.”

Abbott’s comments followed the arrival in the Netherlands Wednesday of the first bodies of those killed in the disaster. The remains were initially taken from the crash site to the governmentheld Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Tuesday.

All 298 people onboard MH17, including 28 Australian nationals and nine residents, died when the aircraft was apparently shot down last week.

Dutch experts have said they were only sure 200 bodies had been recovered so far – well short of accounting for all those onboard. — Bernama

Flight attendants and mourners gather near flower bouquets as they pay their respects at Schiphol Airport during a national day of mourning for the victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in Schiphol, the Netherlands. The bodies of the first victims from the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine last week arrived back in the Netherlands amid dignified grief tinged with anger. Bells pealed and flags flew at half mast in memory of the 298 people killed when flight MH17 crashed in an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russianbacked separatists. — Reuters photo