The Dutch Justice Ministry says a team of 70 international experts got to work today recovering bodies at the MH17 crash site, our newsroom reports.
"Dutch and Australian experts arrived at the crash site on Friday morning.... The 70 experts will conduct search operations in several places at the crash site," the ministry said.
More than 200 coffins have already been sent back to the Netherlands, whose nationals composed 193 of the 298 dead and which is leading the investigation.
More remains have yet to be recovered amid the intense fighting in the area.
AFP photo shows a nurse at a Zaporizhzhya field hospital for Ukrainian troops emptying a bucket of blood onto the ground.
President Vladimir Putin today at the unveiling of a monument to Russian soldiers who fell in World War I. We'll post them here on this Ukraine Crisis blog...well, for obvious reasons:
"[World War I] reminds us of the consequences of aggression and self-aggrandizement, when the excessive ambitions of state leaders and political elites taking precedence over common sense. And instead of protecting the most prosperous continent of the world -- Europe -- plunged it into danger. It is good to remember this today."
"There are many examples in world history of what the terrible price to be paid for an unwillingness to listen to one another, for trampling the rights and freedoms and legal interests of others for the sake of their own interests and ambitions. It wouldn't be bad to learn how to look and plan at least one step ahead."
"Is it high time for humanity to understand and accept the most important truth: violence brings violence, and the path to peace and prosperity is composed of good will and dialogue and the memory of the lessons of past wars -- about who and why were started."
From our newsroom:
A top official in the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" in eastern Ukraine has reportedly been killed in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk region.
According to a Facebook post by Russian Eurasianist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin on August 1, 32-year-old Aleksandr Proselkov was killed by gunfire the previous day as he "accompanied a convoy of humanitarian aid" to Donetsk.
Proselkov was the de facto deputy foreign minister of the breakaway Ukrainian region and an aide to its self-proclaimed leader, Pavel Gubarev.
Ukrainian military officials said Proselkov was killed by "friendly fire" from militants and mercenaries from the breakaway "Luhansk People's Republic."
Dugin speculated Proselkov may have been killed by supporters of rival Russian nationalist political adviser Sergei Kurginyan because of his support for the breakaway regions' military commander, Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov). ("The Kyiv Post" and lenta.ru)