Search For Bodies at MH17 Crash Site Continues

I’m always amazed when people listen/watch a delivered statement and then proceed to extract an entirely different version of what was said or meant. I’ve listened to what Dutch PM Mark Rutte said in both English and Dutch. Maybe something is being lost in the translation or people just want to read between the imaginary lines or believe what they think they hear.

At no point did Rutte praise the separatist rebels, nor say they did a fantastic job of recovering human remains.... He also did not say the search for remains had ended indefinitely. The search has ended for now because the Ukrainian army continues to push east closer to the crash site and take back territory held by rebels. That push and increased firepower and conflict in the area has made the crash site ‘too dangerous’ for the investigators. The investigation has continually operated on a stop-go basis for days due to localised artillary and rocket fire.

The rebels did not recover human remains from the site. They were too busy rifling through the personal belongings of passengers to see what they could get their hands on. The recovery of human remains was tasked to local villagers and authorities with the help of hundreds of local miners. Rutte has accepted on the advice of a doctor overseeing the initial recovery that the search for human remains was far more extensive than first thought. The investigators at the site in the past few days have said they found some human remains, but not many.

There are 220+ coffins at the medical centre in Hilversum, Netherlands currently being exaimed and identified, but that does not mean there are 220 bodies. As no proper identification could be made at the crash site, some of those coffins may very well contain more than the remains of one person. Sadly, due to the fact that there was an intensive burn inferno (when it struck the ground) from the central part of the aircraft where the fuel tanks where, not all of the remains may be recovered.