Ukraine launched a heavy assault on the rebel-held city of Donetsk, as international investigators arrived in the region to examine the remains of 298 people who killed when the Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down on Thursday.
A separatist leader yesterday said Ukrainian government forces were trying to break into Donetsk and there was much fighting taking place near the city’s railway station.
Sergei Kavtaradze, of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said at least four tanks and armoured vehicles were attacking his men. Two rebel tanks were reportedly heading to Donetsk railway station.
A Ukrainian military spokesperson said the operation was in progress, but he would not comment on troop movements.
The city of Donetsk is about 80km from the MH17 crash site. Allies of Kiev said the security situation in the area was hampering the investigations.
Three members of a Dutch victim identification team arrived in the region yesterday, and were expected to visit a railway station near the crash site where nearly 200 bodies have been stored in refrigerated wagons.
Rescuers said they had found a total of 251 bodies and 86 body fragments at the crash site, and added that a second refrigerated train had arrived.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Ukraine was prepared to hand over all evidence to the Dutch, and that the Netherlands should
lead the inquiry into the plane’s destruction.
However, rebels control the crash site, and the whereabouts of the plane’s flight recorders are unknown.
On Sunday, the US Secretary of State John Kerry said he had “overwhelming evidence” that Russia had supplied and trained separatists on a surface-to-air missile system that the US says was used to shoot down the airliner.
“There’s [an] enormous amount of evidence ... that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these systems, training the people to use them,” Kerry said on the CBS news network.
The evidence has not been made public.