RIA Novosti: All Passengers’ Belongings Safe in Place of Malaysia Airlines Plane Crash – OSCE

MOSCOW, July 19 (RIA Novosti) – The belongings of the passengers killed in a Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 crash in eastern Ukraine have been safely preserved, a representative of the special mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine, Michael Bochurkiv, said Saturday, adding that no distortion by the militia in the region has been noted.

Bochurkiv said the group saw many plane fragments at the scene, where they had not been moved, as well as heavily burnt details.

Fragments with colors indicative of Malaysia Airlines were seen dispersed on the territory of about 30 kilometers (18.7 miles), he said, adding the scene contained many personal belongings of the passengers, including documents, items from Amsterdam’s duty free stores, and luggage. The recovered dead bodies were taken to a roadside, Bochurkiv said.

Earlier, UNIAN news agency reported that militias had allegedly stolen 36 bodies of victims of the crash. The armed men chased away the rescuers and took most of their means of communication, the agency said, citing the press service of the Donetsk Regional State Administration.

DPR representatives refute the information about the kidnapping of bodies, saying they control the area around the MH 17 crash site.

Currently, employees of the emergency service are gathering the remains of the victims. The bodies will be taken to Kharkiv, where they will be identified in the laboratory. It is assumed that the remains will be transported in refrigerated trucks, which have not yet arrived at the site, according to a RIA Novosti reporter.

The Malaysia Airlines plane flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on Thursday near the town of Torez in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region. The complete death toll is 298 people.