Canberra : Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott Wednesday said that the crash site of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was still not secure and feared that the bodies of some Australian victims will never return.
Abbott said in a press conference that this situation would “be completely unacceptable for bereaved families in Australia and around the world” and called for a full forensic search of the site, Xinhua reported.
Abbot’s comments came as the bodies of the MH17 victims were being loaded onto military aircraft, including an Australian C-17 plane, at Kharkiv in Ukraine to be flown to the Netherlands.
All 298 people on board the Malaysia Airlines jet, including 27 Australian nationals, were killed after the aircraft was apparently shot down over eastern Ukraine last Thursday.
Abbott said the recovery of human remains had been “quite unprofessional”.
“Based on early inspections, we do not know how many bodies we have,” Abbot said.
“It is quite possible that many bodies are still out there in the open subjected to interference and the ravages of heat and animals. That is the predicament in which we find ourselves.”
Abbott said that he has been gaining support from other world leaders over the past few days in an effort to improve security at the crash site.
“There has been strong support for securing the site, because, obviously, it is at the heart of the UN resolution,” he said.
“I want to stress we will work with partners, we will work under the UN resolution and only under the UN resolution, but we will bring them home,” he said.