The Dutch public prosecution department has sent a collective request to the court in The Hague for death certificates for all the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

The Boeing 777 crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 killing all 298 passengers and crew, 193 of whom were Dutch nationals.

Human remains retrieved from the site by a team of forensic experts have been flown back to the Netherlands for identification. Three bodies have so far been formally identified, two Dutch nationals and one British national.

Under normal circumstances, formal identification is necessary before a death certificate can be issued.

War zone

However, given the difficulty of identifying human remains retrieved from a crash site in a war zone where the Ukrainian army is fighting pro-Russian rebels, the authorities want to speed up the process.

A death certificate is necessary in arranging, for instance, the cancellation of a rental contract or student loan.

The authorities began discussing a collective request shortly after the crash, according to the NRC. They have now handed that request to the court