All 298 on board MH17 identified

, July 19:

Airlines (MAS) on Saturday confirmed the nationalities of all the 298 people on-board flight MH17, which crashed in Ukraine on Thursday.

A statement released on MAS' official website said the identified passengers and crew comprised 192 Dutch (including 1 dual Netherlands/USA citizen), 44 Malaysians (including 15 crew members and two infants), 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians (including an infant), 10 British (including 1 dual UK/S. Africa citizen), four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos, one Canadian and one person from New Zealand.

MAS is working closely with the respective embassies to notify the next-of-kin of the deceased.

The Kuala Lumpur-bound Malaysia Airlines MH17 jetliner crashed on Thursday in Ukraine near the Russian border, with all the 298 passengers and crew members on board reportedly killed. It was believed to have been shot down.

This is the second major tragedy for Malaysia Airlines this year after flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew on board went missing while going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing March 8 and remains untraced till date.

IANS