AFP force may secure MH17 site

UP to 100 Australian Federal Police officers and military personnel could be sent to help secure the MH17 crash site in Ukraine.

AFP force may secure site

UP to 100 Australian Federal Police officers and military ­personnel could be sent to help secure the MH17 crash site in Ukraine, under one of a range of options the Abbott government is considering to bring home the bodies of Australian citizens and residents killed in the disaster.

As Tony Abbott spoke of his deep concern that some of the victims might never be found unless urgent action was taken, he revealed he had instructed military and civil agencies to look at options to protect the crash site as scores of bodies remained missing.

The Australian has been told possible steps under consideration include sending a contingent from the AFP’s International Deployment Group that could form part of an international force.

The Prime Minister stressed yesterday that a wide range of contingency plans was being considered but declined to give details.

It is understood that decisions still to be made include whether a force would be armed or unarmed and whether it would include military personnel and support to protect it in a war zone.

As Foreign Minister Julie Bishop headed to The Netherlands last night, it emerged that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had invited Australia to be part of a peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, as part of a multinational effort to secure the crash site.

Ukrainian officials said Mr Rutte had told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of the country’s options in a telephone call last night.

Mr Abbott said he was talking to the nation’s “partners in grief” about ways to ensure full and ­unrestricted access to the crash site and surrounding areas, as agreed under the UN Security Council resolution.

His special envoy, Angus Houston, who is in Ukraine, had told him that an inter­national investigation of the full crash site, covering about 50sq km, was vital because it could uncover more human remains, personal effects or wreckage.

Such a search could be carried out only if the site were secure.

As the black box recorder from Flight MH17 arrived in London last night for analysis, Mr Abbott said it was possible many bodies were still undiscovered and ­exposed to the heat of the European summer but he vowed to do everything possible to recover them.

“We will bring all of them home,” he said. “We must bring all of them home and my fear is that unless we do more, unless we prepare for further possible measures, some of them will never come home and that would be completely unacceptable for bereaved families in Australia and right around the world.”

Late last night, pro-Russian rebels shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets about 25km from the crash site, according to the Ukrainian military. The fate of the pilots was not known, although one army spokesman said they had parachuted out.

In recent days, the area around Donetsk in eastern Ukraine has been the scene of increasingly heavy fighting between Ukrainian troops and aircraft and Russian-backed rebels.

The Department of Foreign ­Affairs and Trade last night updated its travel advisory, warning those intending to travel to the crash site to be aware of the hazards of ­exposing themselves to “possible risk of serious injury”.

Mr Abbott said yesterday he had serious concerns about how the recovery of the bodies had been carried out.

“It has been, up to now, quite unprofessional,” he said.

The AFP’s International Deployment Group was set up in February 2004 to give the government the ability to send Australian police overseas on stability and ­security operations under the authority of bodies such as the UN.

At present, 400 IDG members are deployed on UN missions in South Sudan and Cyprus and other missions in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga. The group includes “sworn” police officers and other civilian specialists selected for particular operations.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian embassy in Canberra said that his government would do everything possible to ensure the investigation could be carried out safely.

Some of the bodies recovered from the wreckage of MH17 were last night being flown from Kharkiv to The Netherlands aboard Australian and Dutch military aircraft.

“Based on early inspection of the carriages in Kharkiv, we just don’t know how many bodies we have,” Mr Abbott said.

“It’s quite possible that many bodies are still out there in the open, in the European summer, subject to interference and subject to the ravages of heat and animals.”

Mr Abbott said the government was looking at measures that would make it “a reality that we do in fact bring them all home”. “We need a large team conducting a forensic search, a proper scouring of the site to identify anything that may have been missed up until now.

“It might be the partial remains of a loved one. It might be a small, but critical, piece of the aircraft or the missile that is the key to the investigation.’’