Flowers and stuffed animals are placed at the Korporaal van Oudheusdenkazerne in Hilversum, Netherlands, where the identification process of MH17 victims will take place.
AFP
Dutch authorities probing the downing of Malaysian flight MH17 said on Sunday it was "unrealistic" to send armed troops to secure the crash site, after 13 people including two children were killed in fierce fighting in insurgent-held east Ukraine.
The Netherlands and Australia had planned to send armed officers to ensure that investigators are able to carry out their work at the vast crash site. But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte now said this is no longer viable.
"Getting the military upper hand for an international mission in this area is according to our conclusion not realistic," Rutte told journalists in The Hague, noting the presence of heavily armed separatists and the proximity of the border with Russia - accused of backing the rebels.
Even an unarmed team of Dutch and Australian officers was forced to drop their plans to visit the site on Sunday as heavy bombardments rocked towns close to the site, where some remains of the 298 victims from the plane still lie decomposing under the summer sun.
"There is fighting going on. We can't take the risk," said Alexander Hug, deputy chief monitor of the European security body OSCE's special mission in Ukraine.
"The security situation on the way to the site and on the site itself is unacceptable for our unarmed observer mission," he told reporters in the insurgent stronghold Donetsk, the biggest city in the region.
An AFP photographer heard artillery bombardments just a kilometre from the rebel-held town of Grabove, next to the crash site, and saw black smoke billowing into the sky.
Terrified local residents were fleeing and checkpoints controlled by separatist fighters were abandoned.
Earlier, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had said 49 officers from the Netherlands and Australia - which together lost some 221 citizens in the crash - were due at the scene on Sunday and that there would be "considerably more on site in coming days".
That came after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said he had reached an agreement with the pro-Russian insurgents controlling the site to allow the police deployment.
"I hope that this agreement... will ensure security on the ground, so the international investigators can conduct their work," Razak said, adding that 68 Malaysian police personnel would leave Kuala Lumpur for the crash site on Wednesday.
So far investigators have visited the site only sporadically because of security concerns, even though a truce had been called in the immediate area around the site by both the Kiev forces and pro-Russian separatists.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin claimed on Twitter that rebels were responsible for any violence close to the crash site.
Kiev is "committed to its unilateral cease-fire within 40km zone of MH17 site", and "terrorists (are) destroying evidence of the crime", the minister insisted.
Fighting was raging elsewhere as the Ukrainian army pushes on with its offensive to retake the industrial east.
Local authorities reported at least 13 people including two children aged one and five killed on Sunday in fierce combat in rebel holdout Gorlivka, about 45 kilometres to the north of Donetsk, and which has a population of about a quarter of a million.
