The foreign
minister of the Netherlands has said one of the victims of flight MH17 was
found wearing an oxygen mask. This has raised the possibility that not all of
the passengers died instantly, as had been thought.
Dutch
Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans (pictured) first reported the finding
Wednesday during a late-night chat show on national television.
"You
know that somebody was discovered wearing an oxygen mask and had time to put it
on," Timmermans said.
On
Thursday, Wim De Bruin, a spokesman for the National Prosecutor's Office, which
is leading a criminal investigation into the crash confirmed Timmermans'
account.
De Bruin
said Dutch forensics experts had tested the mask "for fingerprints, saliva
and DNA and that did not produce any results. So it is not known how or when
that mask got around the neck of the victim."
He also
said the victim in question, an Australian national, was the only one of the
298 killed in the crash to be found wearing an oxygen mask.
Timmermans
under fire
Timmermans,
who is to leave his post as foreign minister shortly to take up the job of vice
president of the European Commission, has come under fire for the remarks,
which may have caused distress to some of the victims' families. Apart from the
relatives of the Australian, no one had previously been told about the
discovery.
De Bruin
said his office had received a number of calls from relatives of the victims -
193 of whom were Dutch - on Thursday.
The Dutch
Foreign Ministry released a statement on Thursday in which Timmermans apologized
for his remarks.
"I
have an enormous amount of sympathy for the next of kin," he said in the
statement. "The last thing I want to do is compound their suffering in
this way."
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 came down over a part of eastern Ukraine held by
pro-Russia rebels on July 17. An initial report by Dutch investigators said it appeared that the Boeing 777 may have been shot down by a missile, suggesting
that the victims may have been killed nearly instantly. Kyiv and other nations
have pointed the finger at the separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
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