Rebels agree to security zone at Ukraine crash site
GRABOVE: Ukraine and pro-Russian insurgents agreed on Saturday to set up a security zone around the crash site of a Malaysian jet whose downing in the rebel-held east has drawn global condemnation...
July 19, 2014
Outraged world leaders have demanded Russia´s immediate cooperation in a prompt and independent probe into the shooting down on Thursday of flight MH17 with 298 people on board. A team of nearly 30 monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were to try and gain access to the grisly crash site on Saturday after meeting resistance from armed rebels the day before.
But they face a massive challenge in gathering evidence that could definitively determine why the flight ended prematurely in a lawless region where Ukrainian forces have thus far been unable to exert control.
More investigators arrived overnight from the Netherlands -- home to 192 of the victims -- and Malaysia amid calls for unfettered access to the scene as Kiev accused the rebels of trying to destroy crash evidence "with Russian support."
Rebels backed up by strong diplomatic support from the kremlin remain in control of the area and have shown few signs of being ready to cooperate with an investigation that could potentially blame them for attacking the jet.
And an agreement to set up a buffer zone came only after two days of intense international mediation and has yet to be fully put to the test.
The sunflower fields of the war-ravaged former Soviet nation remained littered with dismembered remains of scarred bodies and personal effects such as slippers of 298 people whose lives were cut short as they flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron agreed by phone that "all countries should engage to ensure that pro-Russian separatists grant investigators secure and unhindered access to the crash site," Downing Street said.
The head of the Ukrainian Security Service announced on Saturday that OSCE-mediated talks "concluded with an agreement to set up a 20-kilometre (12-mile) security zone so that Ukraine could fulfil the most important thing -- identify the bodies (and) hand them over to relatives.
"But the pro-Kiev administration of the Donetsk province where the doomed flight ended so abruptly alleged that militias in control of the area "had stolen the bodies of 36 victims (and) loaded them onto truck as if they were sacks.
"There was no independent confirmation of the claim or explanation from the local authorities as to why the rebels would remove bodies from the scene.
Ukrainian rescue workers said they had recovered 186 bodies thus far.
Fighting also raged on across the eastern rustbelt -- a Russia-speaking region of seven million people who largely view the more nationalistic west of the splintered country with mistrust.
Ukrainian forces reported taking full control of the main airport of the rebel stronghold of Lugansk -- like Donetsk capital of its own "People´s Republic" -- and launching all-out offensives against two nearby towns.
Government troops said they had also entered Donetsk airport for the first time since it was seized at the end of May in a bloody raid that saw militias lose more than 40 fighters -- most of them Russian nationals.
