Three people were killed in clashes near the railway station and close to the airport outside Donetsk, health officials say
Fresh fighting flared in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Monday.
The clashes took place as investigators began to inspect the bodies of victims of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 last week, reports Reuters.
Three people were killed in clashes near the railway station and close to the airport outside Donetsk, health officials said.
The fighting in Donetsk served as a reminder of the dangers the experts face working in a war zone.
International inspectors got access to the remains of hundreds of victims stored in refrigerated railway wagons near the crash site but governments expressed concern over broader access to the rebel-held area.
The government in Kiev denied sending the regular army into the center of Donetsk, which pro-Russian separatists captured in April, but said small “self-organised” pro-Ukrainian groups were fighting the rebels in the city.
Artillery fire sent plumes of smoke skywards near the Donetsk railway station, around 60 km from the crash site, in what the separatists said was an attempt by government forces to enter the city they seized in April. The clashes quickly subsided.
Donetsk is at the heart of a rebel uprising against rule by Kiev.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to retake the city as part of what Kiev calls its “anti-terrorist operation” against the separatists.
Against a background of international horror over the fate of the remains of the 298 victims of the Malaysia Airlines disaster, the first international investigators reached eastern Ukraine on Monday.
Three members of a Dutch disaster victims identification team arrived at a railway station near the crash site where rebels say 247 bodies have been stored in refrigerated wagons.
About two thirds of the crash victims were Dutch.
The head of the team inspected the storage of the bodies in the rail cars and, despite an overwhelming stench of decomposition when the doors were opened, said it was fine.
“The storage of the bodies is of good quality,” said Peter van Vliet, whose team went through the wagons dressed in surgical masks and rubber gloves.
Van Vliet said he had been told the train would be leaving the station at Torez later on Monday so that bodies can be taken to where they can be identified and repatriated. He could not say where it was going.
Ukrainian officials said as of Monday morning 272 bodies and 66 fragments of bodies had been found.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
