A group of international experts together with the emergency situations ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) has started collecting the remains of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing aircraft that crashed in the Donetsk region.

A group of six experts has started work near the community of Hrabove, an Interfax correspondent reported from the scene.

The group is currently dividing the scene into quadrants and examining them. Any finds will be placed in several containers standing at the site.

The Malaysia Airlines MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board, including 192 Dutch nationals.

An investigative team has managed to identify the remains of 289 casualties so far.

The Dutch Safety Board's preliminary report said earlier that the aircraft had experienced no mechanical failure and broke up in midair after being struck by "a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside."

An agreement was signed in early August between the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Ukraine, Malaysia and Eurojust on setting up a joint international investigative team. However, experts have so far been unable to reach the crash scene because of ongoing combat activity in the area.

Dutch representatives, together with OSCE monitors, are continuing to collect passengers' belongings. At a meeting in late October, international experts agreed to complete the second phase of the investigation before the weather becomes too cold.