A resident in Oktyabrsky district in Donetsk, east Ukraine, on Monday stands in front of her house ruined by crossfire between government forces and rebels. Several civilian houses in the region, which is some 600 meters away from Donetsk airport, were ruined in the strike. Photo: Cui Meng/GT

The downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 "may amount to a war crime," the UN said Monday.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the "horrendous shooting down" of the Malaysian passenger jet in rebel-held territory that killed all 298 people on board, and demanded a "thorough, effective, independent and impartial investigation."

"This violation of international law, given the prevailing circumstances, may amount to a war crime," she said in a statement.

The Red Cross said last week that Ukraine is now in civil war - a classification that would make parties in the conflict liable to prosecution for war crimes.

The UN said that more than 1,100 people have been killed in fighting in east Ukraine as both government forces and rebels have increasingly used heavy weapons in built-up areas.

"Both sides must take great care to prevent more civilians from being killed or injured," Pillay said.

Some 100,000 people have now fled the conflict zone in the east for other areas of Ukraine, the UN said in the report released Monday.

Meanwhile, international investigators and experts are trying to enter the crash site of flight MH17 despite shelling in the area.

Dutch and Australian forensic investigators on their way to the MH17 crash site turned back Monday after "explosions" in the area, a Dutch government spokeswoman in The Hague said.

"They have returned in the direction of Donetsk," justice ministry spokeswoman Sentina van der Meer told AFP.

The Ukrainian army has seized control of part of the vast crash site of flight MH17 in the east of the country, pro-Russia rebels claimed on Monday.

"The Ukrainians have taken over a part of the crash site," said Vladimir Antyufeev, first deputy prime minister of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic in the area.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have been unable to access the site due to heavy shelling.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that OSCE monitors would see Russia is not sending arms and fighters to help the rebels.

He said that the OSCE could use drones and any other technical means to carry out "objective" observation.

Meanwhile, the EU was readying a fresh list of sanctions on Monday, sources said.

Japan on Monday announced it would impose additional sanctions against those responsible for the "annexation of Crimea and destabilization of eastern Ukraine," without offering further details.

Tokyo would also cooperate with the EU on a plan with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to freeze funding for new projects in Russia, said Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

Putin responded to the sanctions by urging Russia's defense industry to swiftly cut imports, saying that Russia's arms industry is "definitely" capable of producing everything the country needs at a meeting on how to combat the sanctions at his residence outside Moscow.

Agencies

Black boxes show crash caused by rocket shrapnel: Kiev

Black boxes recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in east Ukraine show shrapnel from a rocket explosion caused the passenger jet to crash, a Ukrainian security official said Monday.

International investigators "indicated that data from flight recorders show that the reason for the destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket explosion," said Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.

Investigators leading the probe in the Netherlands - which lost 193 citizens on the doomed jet - refused to confirm the latest information from Kiev, waiting for more complete report.

AFP


Newspaper headline: UN says crash may be ‘war crime’