Ukraine offensive hampers Western efforts at plane crash site

(Vatican Radio)  Sunday's appeal by Pope Francis to end the violence in Ukraine and to remember children suffering there, came while battles raged between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

The fighting has made it difficult for a Netherlands-led international mission to secure an area where a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane was shot down last week, killing all 298 people on board, as regional correspondent Stefan Bos reports:

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Ukraine's government said troops advanced to the outskirts of the regional capital Donetsk as they tried to retake the stronghold held for months by Russia-backed rebels.

Yet, Kyiv has accused Russia of firing at Ukrainian military positions and supplying weapons to the rebels, charges Moscow denies.  

Amid the chaos, Catholic officials confirmed that an ethnically Polish priest, who was abducted in in the area on July 15th by pro-Russian forces on his way to mass in Horlivka city, has been released. The 39-year Wiktor Wasowicz was the third priest known to have been kidnapped by rebels in recent weeks.

However his release did not ease tensions as fighting forced an international team of police and experts to halt their journey to the site where a Malaysian passenger plane was shot down from rebel-held territory.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Netherlands-led mission has to reach the area, amid frustration about reported looting and mishandling of human remains.

"The Australian Federal Police will be deployed to the site as part of an unarmed, Dutch-led international humanitarian mission," Abbott told reporters.

"...There should be 49 on site of whom 11 will be Australian and I expect that there will be considerably more on site in coming days," he explained.

".. Our objective is principally to recover the bodies – that is what the Australian people expect of us. That is what grieving families around the world deserve," Abbott added.

Dutch team leader Jan Tuinder cautioned however that he and his colleagues need more Ukrainian support. 

"This is an enormous terrain to be searched, so we need an enormous amount of people and material to do that. So we really need the Ukrainian government to support us in that," he said.    

Despite difficulties, 227 wooden coffins containing human remains have been flown to the Netherlands for identification, and the first passenger, a Dutch citizen, was already identified.  Over 200 forensic experts are working at a military barracks in the central Dutch town of Hilversum to identify bodies and human remains recovered from the wreckage of flight MH17, which downed was on July 17 in Ukraine, killing everyone including scores of children.