New flight with remains of MH17 victims arrives in Eindhoven

A Dutch military transport aircraft carrying three coffins with remains of victims of the MH17 flight disaster arrived at Eindhoven Air Base in Netherlands on Saturday.

The new remains were found in the past week near Grabovo village in eastern Ukraine by a team of Dutch police and defense officers and were transported to Kharkiv, the second largest city of Ukraine. The team is also preparing for the Dutch repatriation mission next month.

The plane with three coffins left the airport of Kharkiv and arrived around 4 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) in Eindhoven. Dutch Minister of Security and Justice Ard van der Steur and Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker were present at the airbase for the ceremonial tribute, held as previous times.

After the ceremony, the coffins left for the Corporal Van Oudheusden Barracks in Hilversum city, where identification will take place. The coffins arrived in Hilversum Saturday evening.

The Malaysian Airlines MH17 flight crashed on July 17 last year, killing 298 people, including 196 Dutch citizens.

On March 21, Steur announced that one more victim has been identified, resulting in a total of 296 identified victims.

A previous flight with one coffin of human remains arrived in Eindhoven on February 7. In the week after the crash, four larger transports took place, on July 23, 24, 25 and 26 respectively, with a total of eight planes, followed by transports on August 4, November 8 and November 28 last year. Endi