SIDEBAR Rescue operation at Ukrainian crash zone hampered by rebels
Moscow/Kyiv (dpa) – More than 24 hours after the presumed downing of
a Malaysian jet with 298 passengers on board over eastern Ukraine,
the rescue operation in rebel-held territory was running slowly
Friday.
Members of Ukraine‘s Emergency Situations Service were at the scene
but armed separatists were complicating their efforts, officials
said.
“They hinder the work of Ukrainian specialists and said they want to
bring the flight recorders and the victims‘ bodies to Russia,” Serhiy
Taruta, the Kyiv-appointed governor of the Donetsk region, said in a
statement.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said
that separatists prevented a group of monitors from fully inspecting
the site.
“They did not have the freedom of movement they need,” Switzerland‘s
OSCE Ambassador Thomas Greminger said. He added that the observers
would try to gain access again on Saturday.
A source close to the organization said that shots were fired in the
vicinity of the group of 17 monitors.
The Ukrainan National Security and Defence Council said that it was
in talks with separatists to allow the victims‘ relatives to visit
the site.
“Ukrainian authorities are doing everything to allow that people can
take their dead,” council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said, the Interfax
Ukraine news agency reported.
Andrei Purgin, a leader of the self-declared Donetsk People‘s
Republic, said that the bodies would probably be brought to Mariupol,
a city 150 kilometers south of the crash site. It has not been
decided if relatives should come to the city on the Sea of Azov,
Purgin told Interfax.
Lysenko, of the Security and Defence Council, also said that the
flight recorders had not been handed over yet.
Representatives of the pro-Russian separatist said Thursday that they
would hand over the so-called black boxes to Russia.
Russia‘s Interstate Aviation Committee, which has a cooperation
agreement with Ukraine, subsequently suggested to set up an
international investigation into the accident.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Friday that the flight
recorders must be given to international experts.
“They cannot be handed by terrorists to a third party,” Poroshenko
told British Prime Minister David Cameron during a phone call,
according to a statement.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that Russia wanted to
take the flight recorders. “We want that foreign experts investigate
the crash,” he said in a television interview.