Mother Of MH17 Plane Crash Victim Sues Ukraine In European Court: Paper

BERLIN (Reuters) - The mother of a German woman killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was downed over eastern Ukraine in July is suing the Ukrainian authorities at the European Court of Human Rights for failing to close their airspace, a German paper reported.

The mother of the victim named as "Olga L." was seeking $1 million in compensation from Kiev for manslaughter by negligence and had begun proceedings in the past week, Bild am Sonntag newspaper said on Sunday.

According to the indictment, Ukraine should have closed its airspace to civil air traffic because of fighting with pro-Russian separatists.

It accuses Ukraine of failing to do so because it wanted to continue to profit from the fees paid by transit flights - which at the time numbered 700 per day and would have earned it several million dollars a month, the newspaper reported.

The victim's mother is represented by aviation lawyer Elmar Giemulla who has argued that under international law Ukraine should have closed its air space if it could not guarantee the safety of flights.

Giemulla said in September he was representing three families of German victims of the crash.

The airliner crashed in Ukraine in pro-Russian rebel-held territory on July 17, killing 298 people, two-thirds of them from the Netherlands. Four Germans died in the crash.

Ukraine has accused the rebels of shooting the plane down with an advanced Russian-made missile. Russia has rejected accusations that it supplied the rebels with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems.

European governments have so far refrained from openly attributing blame.