Rescue workers have completed their mission to salvage the major parts of Malaysian Airways flight MH17, brought down in eastern Ukraine in July by a missile.

The Dutch-led team has collected 650 cubic metres of wreckage, plus human remains and personal possessions during their work at the site of the crash. This will now be brought to the Netherlands for investigation, although how this will happen is not yet clear, the NRC said.

‘The mission passed off extremely well,’ a team leader told reporters. ‘Every day we had to contend with shooting or other incidents,’ he said. ‘If something had happened in the city, then the local staff could not help us and we could not go to the crash site.’