MH17: Post-Mortems Conducted On 150 Complete Bodies And 300 Body Parts

PUTRAJAYA (Malaysia), Aug 6 (Bernama) -- The Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team has conducted post-mortems on 150 complete bodies and 300 body parts of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 victims as of Tuesday, Health Minister Dr S. Subramaniam said Wednesday. He said the body parts were among 600 parts contained in 226 coffins that arrived from Ukraine. "Of the 600 parts, post-mortems had been conducted on 450 of them, of which 150 were complete bodies, while 300 were various incomplete body parts," he added. Dr Subramaniam said the DVI team was also in the process of conducting a post-mortem on the remains in a coffin which arrived at the Hiversum army camp on Aug 4. "The post-mortem is expected to be completed in one or two weeks, after which the matching process will be conducted based on the DNA samples of immediate family members," he told a news conference before chairing the ministry's post-cabinet meeting, here. He said the process of matching the remains with the DNA would take another three weeks, after which the government would decide on the process of bringing home the remains of the victims. "Family members of some of the victims want the bodies to be brought home as soon as possible, while others want the bodies to be cremated there (in the Netherlands. The government will consider all views," he added. Dr Subramaniam said currently, the Malaysian and international DVI teams were in the phase of matching the ante-mortem and post-mortem data to identify the victims. Flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine, near its border with Russia, on July 17 while on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. The Boeing 777-200 aircraft is believed to have been shot down over the troubled country. Besides Malaysians, nationals from the Netherlands, Australia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines, Canada and New Zealand were among the 298 passengers and crew on board. -- BERNAMA