A team of international investigators from the European-backed Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE), along with investigators from the Netherlands and Australia, started to work through the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 – over two weeks after the plane was shot down on July 17, according to Time.
The investigation team's previous attempts to go to the crash site in western Ukraine were thwarted by the ongoing between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatist fighters, leaving the team to wait out the fighting in the separatist-held city of Donetsk, reportd CBS News and the AP.
GIven the lengthy delay, the investigators were concerned about what kind of shape the site was going to be in by the time they finally arrived. Officials worried that the hot mid-summer weather might play a role in the maintenance of any crash evidence and that rebels may have looted the crash site.
In fact, Ukrainian government officials have maintained that rebels wish to impede the investigation as much as possible and have placed mines near the crash site, reports Reuters and Newsweek. However, the OSCE has yet to find any evidence to support the claims that rebels might have had an opportunity to remove evidence incriminating them in the plane's downing while on its flight from Amsterdam to Kula Lumpur.
Once they were finally able to get to the crash site, investogators began sifting through the wreckage to recover the remains and belongings of the 298 victims, while the rebels guarded the perimeter of the crash zone, according to AP.
Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, who is heading the Dutch investigation team, told reporters on Friday in Kiev that while they were happy to finally get their investigation underway, the investigation team would have a tough road ahead.
"If we have maximum capacity, we think we need at least three weeks to do a full search, but that's a very thin prospect," Aalbersberg said.
Before the investigation team was able to reach the site, rescue workers under the supervision of the rebel forces were able to recover over 200 bodies and send them to Amsterdam for examination and identification.
