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MH17 victim 'wore mask'

October 9, 2014

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.

https://p.dw.com/p/1DSYm
Luxemburg Treffen der Außenminister April 2014 Niederlande Timmermans
Image: Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images

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.

pfd/mkg (AP, AFP)