Chapter 2: Introduction

RAINE

mpur are feared dead. Early reporChapter Two ts say the Boeing from Amsterdam. Pro-RussianIntroduction separatists and Dr Ahmad Hafizam Hasmi joins Malaysians in expressingDr Khoo Lay See Lai Poh Soon shock. Col. Dr Wan Azmil Mohamed Annuar Dr Hairuladha Abdul Razak

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Chapter Two

Introduction

n 17 July 2014, flight MH17, a Malaysia Airlines

O(MAS) carrier in airworthy condition, departed from Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands at 1320 UTC. The Boeing type 777- 2H6ER aircraft with the registration identification 9M-MRD was carrying 283 passengers and 15 flight and cabin crew members, heading for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Malaysia. The National Bureau of Air Accident Investigation of the Ukraine (NBAAI) was notified by the Ukrainian State Air Traffic Service Enterprise (UkSATSE) that communication with the flight crew had been lost at 0600 UTC on 18 July 2014. Later, it was confirmed that Flight MH17 had crashed in Hrabove, Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, approximately 50km from the Ukraine-Russia border.

The MH17 aviation tragedy involved victims of many nationalities. The passengers of the aircraft were made up of citizens of the Netherlands (193), Malaysia (43), Australia (27), the Republic of Indonesia (12), the United Kingdom (10), the Federal Republic of Germany (4), Belgium (4), the Republic of the Philippines (3), Canada (1) and New Zealand (1). There were no survivors. The devastating occurrence took place over an open farmland southwest of the quiet village of Hrabove, a tragic consequence of an armed civil conflict ongoing at the time in Ukraine, between armed separatists groups and the Ukrainian armed forces. The wreckage and parts of the aircraft came down in an area that was under the control of the separatist [1], a fact that would make the DVI Malaysia’s mission to retrieve the remains of the victims doubly complicated.