Australians take part in search for more human remains from MH17 crash site

At last, after weeks of frustration for investigators and emotional pain for families and friends of the 298 passengers and crew lost in the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, the wheat and sunflower fields of eastern Ukraine on Friday took on the appearance of an orderly, professional search for human remains and personal belongings.

After a minute of silence Australian Federal Police and their Dutch colleagues mapped the site as a grid and started the process of fanning out to search for the remains of as many as 80 victims whose remains are believed to be still strewn on a 50 sq/km swathe of country that has is locked in an intensifying separatist war.

Grad missiles and other munitions threw up huge clouds of smoke in the near distance, but by Friday morning, it seemed international criticism finally had cowed rebel forces and those of the Ukrainian government to allow the search get under way unhindered.

Australian Federal Police officer Brian McDonald (second from right) talks with his Dutch counterpart. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Dozens of Australian and Dutch police who for a week had been blocked from going to the site by the fighting, set up a site headquarters in a chicken farm on the outskirts of Grabovka village, before fanning out across the fields - wearing plastic gloves, carrying maps and, in some cases, blue buckets.

Dogs trained to help in searching for human remains are expected to join the search as early as Saturday.

Australia, the US and other Western governments blame Moscow-backed rebels for firing the missile that caused the crash. Russia and the separatists who have set up a breakaway republic claim that Ukrainian forces were the culprits.

Australian Federal Police searching at the MH17 crash site for human remains. Photo: Kate Geraghty

The development coincided with the release in Kiev of a map which Ukrainian forces confirms the success of the Ukrainian national army and its paramilitary supporters of encircling the separatist stronghold Donetsk, from which the Australians and Dutch moved on Friday morning - as much to have easier access to the site from their new base at Soledar, about 95 kilometres north of the site, as to remove them from a city that is expected to come under a sustained Ukrainian attack in the coming days or weeks.

As the bodies of 10 Ukrainian soldiers were recovered from the scene of a nearby separatist ambush, AFP mission chief Brian McDonald confirmed amidst the relative peace of the crash site that it had now been formally declared to be a crime scene on which the wreckage of the Malaysian Airways Boeing 777 would be a crucial task.

'It's not landing here, so it's OK,' Commander McDonald said of on-going tank-fire. 'We've got a job to do, so we will get on with it.'

The convoy including the OSCE, Australian Federal Police and their Dutch counterparts making their way to the MH17 crash site. Photo: Kate Geraghty

His Dutch counterpart, police chief Cornelis Kuijs, said in a statement 'We in the joint operation to salvage all the human remains here and bring them back to their families are very happy we finally touched ground and can send our guys to work.'

'Professionally, we have an interesting, challenging job, being done in a very polite, respectful way.'

Shifting the entire investigative team to Soledar was a sensible response to the near impossible logistics of a site visit by just two of the Australians on Thursday - more than 11 hours on the road, with all the insecurity of a war zone for just 85 minutes on the ground.

A portion of the MH17 wing lies in a field. Photo: Kate Geraghty

That tentative visit was an emotional salve to the investigator's frustration at not being able to get there all week. But it also underscored the near impossibility of the investigators being able to work in a war zone. Canberra and the other capitals involved in this tragedy should be working on shaming Kiev into reinstating, and observing, the 40-kilometre combat exclusion zone it initially proposed around the site.

Moving house reduced the size of the Australian Federal Police team that was dispatched to the crash site on Friday. On Thursday team leader Commander Brian McDonald suggested that as many as 60 might attend on Friday, but an initial morning foray included 38.

The 15-vehicle Australian-Dutch convoy arrived at the MH17 crash site shortly before noon - and remained till after 4pm. Mostly 4WDs, it also included a bus filled with Australian Federal Police officers and an ambulance.

Rebel gunmen were at the scene in hot and windy conditions, but in contrast to the intense fighting across the district on Thursday, the investigators were greeted by an occasional sound that is strange in these parts - at times they could hear the silence of no combat.

On arriving at the Garbovka section of the crash site, where big sections of the mid and rear fuselage landed and less that 500 metres from where the engines created an inferno, the team quickly established its site HQ and by 1.30pm, the ground search was under way.

In a haphazard initial search in the days after the crash rebels and later Ukrainian emergency services collected bodies and possessions. A refrigerated train delivered the remains of about 200 victims to the northern city of Kharkiv - but it is understood that they have positioned a train at the nearby rail head, Torez, in which they have stored an unknown quantity of human remains, in a refrigerated wagon, and some of the passengers' personal belongings.