MH17 crash wreckage on the way to Netherlands for analysis

WRECKAGE is finally being removed from the scene of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash in eastern Ukraine, four months after the aircraft was apparently shot down.

Workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry of the selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic began loading wreckage on to lorries yesterday.

The work, supervised by Dutch investigators and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, follows months of wrangling over access, meaning that debris and passengers’ belongings have been left strewn across the 20 square kilometre crash site for months.

The wreckage, which will be cut into smaller parts for transportation, will be loaded on to trains bound for the governmentcontrolled city of Kharkiv before being flown to the Netherlands for analysis.

Rebel emergency services officials said the recovery could take 10 days.

Removal of the wreckage has also been delayed by fighting between rebels and Ukrainian Government forces.

Fight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was blown out of the sky over separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

A preliminary report released by the Dutch Safety Board in September concluded that the aircraft had been destroyed by multiple ‘‘high energy objects’’, but stopped short of assigning blame for the crash.

Ukraine and Western governments have said that the aircraft was mistakenly shot down by rebels using a sophisticated antiaircraft missile system supplied by Russia.

Russia and separatists from the Donetsk People’s Republic, who controlled the area where the plane crashed, have denied the charge.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, came under renewed pressure over the crash at the G20 summit in Brisbane after Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbottthreatened to ‘‘shirt front’’ him over the crash, in which 27 Australians died. ‘‘Shirt front’’ is an Australian rules football term meaning to charge someone headon.

Putin left the summit early after frosty encounters with David Cameron, Barack Obama and Steven Harper, the Canadian prime minister.

Meanwhile, Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, said over the weekend that Kiev would withdraw all state services from rebelheld territory.

Photos: AFP/REUTERS On its way: Members of the Dutch expert team watch as parts of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 are removed and loaded on to a truck at the crash site near the village of Grabove, in eastern Ukraine.

Piece by piece: Rebel emergency services officials say the recovery of the plane debris and passengers’ belongings could take 10 days.