Forensic experts identify another 10 victims of MH17 crash

USPA News - Forensic experts in the Netherlands have this week identified another 10 victims of downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, pushing the total number of victims identified so far to 183, the Dutch government said Friday, more than a month after the crash. The Dutch Justice and Security Ministry said the remains of 10 additional victims had been identified since the previous update on August 22. It said 5 of the newly-identified victims were Dutch nationals while the other 5 had a foreign nationality.

Relatives of those victims have already been notified. In total, forensic experts have now identified 117 Dutch victims, including one Dutch national who also had a British passport, and 66 persons who had a foreign nationality. The nationalities of the foreign victims are not known because the Dutch government previously decided to change its policy with regards to the publication of foreign victims being identified. "At the request of the embassies of the countries involved, the specific nationalities of victims who are not Dutch will not be released," the ministry said in a statement. "A team of experts is working hard to identify the victims but, as emphasized earlier, it can still take months before each victim has been identified. The media will be notified regularly about the status of this process." Malaysian officials said last week that 28 Malaysian victims were among those identified so far. The Dutch ministry, before the policy change earlier this month, had disclosed that 1 German national, 1 Canadian national, and 1 British national were also among those identified at that point. A number of Australian citizens have also been identified. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed near the city of Torez in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew in the world`s deadliest aviation disaster since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. It is believed the aircraft was downed by a surface-to-air missile which was fired from separatist-controlled territory, but separatists there have denied being responsible. Forensic experts have so far been unable to recover all bodies from the crash site due to ongoing fighting in the area. A total of 228 coffins have been flown back to the Netherlands for identification, but some of the coffins contained only partial remains, and it is unclear how many bodies remain unaccounted for.