KIEV: THE three Malaysian aviation experts tasked with inspecting the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash site entered ground zero yesterday.
They inspected much of the burnt and charred area, covering some 20 square kilometres, taking many pictures.
What they get out of it, however, remains to be seen. Efforts to contact Department of Civil Aviation director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the man the trio were supposed to keep briefed, proved unsuccessful.
However, sources said the experts — Malaysia Airlines director of engineering Azahari Dahlan and Department of Civil Aviation senior assistant directors Captain Philip Joseph Selvaraju and Mohd Naemy Fahimy Mustapa — finally arrived at the site not long after the train carrying the remains of more than 280 of the 298 victims of the crashed airliner arrived in Kharkiv.
“Much of the wreckage has been removed. We knew that before the team went in, as we saw as much in TV media reports before this.
“There are still lots of pieces of the wreckage there, so they will see what they can find out.
“There is still no telling how long they will be there, or how long they will be allowed to be there,” said a source.
The team is the last of three to be allowed into the area by separatists. Three Dutch experts and a team from the International Civil Aviation Organisation had been allowed in.
All seven were allowed access at the same time, but were told that due to security reasons, they would be brought in in three groups.
The Malaysian team’s journey brought them from Kiev to Kharkiv via flight, followed by road journeys to separatist-held Donetsk and finally to Torez, the small town near Grabovo where the aircraft came down after being shot down by what was believed to be an SA-11 missile fired from a BUK surface-to-air missile system, the origin of which is being disputed by Ukraine, the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia.
Sources said some bits of debris at the scene showed signs of having been hit by a missile.
“That is what the experts are saying... but it doesn’t tell us where this missile came from.”