MH17 victim was found with oxygen mask: Dutch foreign minister
One of the people on the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 shot down in Ukraine in July was found wearing an oxygen mask, the Dutch foreign minister and prosecutors said.
It raised the possibility that some passengers might have known their plane was doomed.
“You know that somebody was discovered wearing an oxygen mask and had time to put it on,” Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans told a talk show on national television late on Wednesday.
Dutch prosecutors confirmed on Thursday they were investigating after the oxygen mask was discovered draped around the person’s neck.
“How and when the mask ended up around the victim’s neck is unknown,” the prosecutors stressed.
“The Dutch Forensics Institute examined the mask looking for fingerprints, saliva and DNA, but the probe has not revealed any result,” they said in a letter to victims’ families which was published online.
Nobody else was wearing mask
None of the other victims of the fatal crash that killed all 298 on board – 193 of them Dutch – was wearing an oxygen mask, they added.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down on July 17 while flying over insurgent-held territory in conflict-wracked eastern Ukraine.
The findings of an initial report by a Dutch-led team of air crash investigators appear to back up claims that the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile.
Source: AFP
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