KIEV: The remains of the last victims of flight MH17 may never be recovered from the Ukrainian battlefield where their plane was shot down four months ago, the Dutch foreign minister said Saturday, as fighting rumbled on in the east of the country.

Foreign Minister Bert Koenders made the grim assessment in the city of Kharkiv, where he attended a memorial service for five more sets of human remains collected from the site of the disaster and flown to The Netherlands.

“We cannot say at this moment in any certain way...at what moment and even if we can recover the last nine” victims, he said.

The shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on July 17, killing all 298 aboard, was one of the worst tragedies of a war in which an estimati9ed 4,000 people have died. So far, the remains of 289 of those victims have been identified.

Ukraine and the West blame Russian-backed separatist fighters for the catastrophe, while Moscow pointed the finger at Kiev, in an incident that galvanized international shock over the chaos in a country bordering the European Union.

Ukraine reported more bloody fighting overnight, with three soldiers killed, as Moscow denied claims it had sent tanks across the border.

Ukraine’s military said one paratrooper was shot dead by a sniper in Donetsk international airport, where government forces are defending a pocket of territory near the biggest rebel-held city. Fifteen other soldiers were wounded in shelling of government positions around the conflict zone, a statement said.

The deadly fighting rumbled on in the industrial east despite a two-month old cease-fire deal that has halted significant offensives, but failed to stop shelling at strategic flashpoints.

Donetsk’s city hall said two civilians were wounded by shrapnel as the north of the city was rocked by explosions overnight.