Two more MH17 crash victims identified

THE HAGUE - Two more victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine have been identified, raising the total number of identified victims to 294, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice announced on Thursday.

The flight crashed on July 17 over Ukraine airspace, killing 298 passengers on board, of whom 196 were Dutch citizens. Four victims remain unidentified and all of them were Dutch.

All identifications of the victims have been carried out in Hilversum, a city in the province of North Holland, by the National Forensic Investigation Team (LTFO) based on tooth status, fingerprints or DNA.

Information about the remaining four unidentified victims might be available on the body parts currently present in Hilversum, but according to the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice, it is also possible that the remains of those missing passengers are not yet recovered from the crash site.

On Nov 28, a Dutch military transport aircraft arrived at Eindhoven Air Base, the home base of the Royal Netherlands Air Force's transport aircraft, from Kharkiv, carrying six coffins with human remains of the victims. Kharkiv is Ukraine's second largest city in the northeast part of the country, where the remains of many crash victims were gathered

That could be the last transport, at least for this year, with winter and snow coming up in eastern Ukraine and the recovery mission being finished for now.