The Boeing 777 came down in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing
all 298 people on board, two-thirds of them Dutch.
Washington and its allies said pro-Russian rebels fighting in the
area hit the plane with a surface-to-air missile. Russia, caught up
in its worst confrontation with the West since the Cold war, said
the missile came from a Ukrainian government jet.
Relatives of the dead passengers and crew waited outside the Dutch
airforce base in the southern town of Gilze-Rijen where the wreckage
was due to arrive later in the afternoon.
Grieving families have protested against delays in investigating how
the plane broke apart - debris lay strewn across the crash site for
months after the crash. One group last week called for a U.N. envoy
to take over the investigation, saying the Dutch authorities had
failed to build a case.
The Netherlands launched the largest criminal investigation in its
history after the crash and supervised the collection of the debris
by Ukrainian emergency services.
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The wreckage was transferred under a deal with Kiev and, through
mediation by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), the pro-Russian separatists.
The Dutch safety Board said the bits of wreckage would be
photographed, scanned and categorized and experts would then attempt
to reconstruct the airliner.
(Reporting By Anthony Deutsch)
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