Forensic experts identify another 42 victims of MH17 crash

USPA News - Forensic experts in the Netherlands have identified another 42 victims of downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, putting the total number of victims identified so far at 65, the Dutch government said Saturday, more than three weeks after the crash. The Dutch Justice and Security Ministry said the remains of 42 additional victims had been identified since the previous update on Friday afternoon.

It said 21 of the newly-identified victims were Dutch while the other 21 have a foreign nationality. Relatives of those victims have already been notified. "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." Saturday`s update indicates the Dutch government decided to change its policy with regards to the publication of foreign victims being identified. The ministry had previously disclosed that, as of Friday, the victims identified at that time consisted of 39 Dutch nationals (including 1 who also had the British nationality), 2 Malaysian nationals, 1 German national, 1 Canadian national, and 1 British national. 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. 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.