Experts from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday reached the crash site of Malaysia Airways flight MH17, after almost a week of trying.

The convoy, which includes Dutch and Australian representatives, took a different route to the site in an effort to avoid fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army.

‘I am very pleased that today our team has been able to reach the disaster zone, exactly two weeks after flight MH17 crashed,’ Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, head of the Dutch mission, is quoted as saying by the Volkskrant.

Bodies

Most of the Dutch experts, charged with recovering the remaining bodies and investigating the cause of the crash, remain in Donetsk until the situation is safer.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte on Thursday met his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak in The Hague to discuss the latest situation.

He said that the Netherlands has three priorities: to repatriate the victims and their possessions, to achieve clarity about the cause of the crash and to ensure the perpetrators are punished, the Volkskrant says.

All 298 people on board the Boeing 777 were killed when it was apparently hit by a missile. They included 196 Dutch nationals – the Dutch death toll was revised upwards on Thursday after it emerged one Malaysian man also had Dutch nationality.

So far 227 bodies have been brought back to the Netherlands for identification.