A train carrying the remains of many of the 298 victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 arrived at a Ukrainian government base on Tuesday on the first leg of their final journey home to be reclaimed by their families.
Five refrigerated wagons containing 200 body bags arrived in the city of Kharkiv after pro-Russian separatists agreed to hand over the plane’s black boxes to Malaysian authorities and the bodies to the Netherlands, where many victims had lived.
The train slowly rolled into the grounds of an arms industry plant, where the remains are due to be unloaded and flown to the Netherlands. A spokesowman for a Dutch team of forensic experts in Kharkiv said this was not expected before Wednesday.
The Malaysia Airlines plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down on July 17 near Donetsk, a stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, where fighting with Ukrainian troops flared again on Tuesday.
Western governments, including European Union ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, have threatened Russia with broader sanctions for what they say is its backing of the militia although they are struggling to agree a response.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would urge the separatists to allow a full investigation. The Netherlands said it would lead the investigation while Malaysia said it would look after the plane’s black boxes until a team was set up.
“Here they are, the black boxes,” separatist leader Aleksander Borodai told journalists at the headquarters of his self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic as an armed rebel placed the boxes on a desk.
A small group of Malaysian air crash experts became the first international accident investigators to reach the site on Tuesday, escorted by a convoy of international monitors and heavily armed separatist fighters.
As they went about their work, loud explosions were heard on the outskirts of Donetsk, some 60 km (40 miles) from the site One shell was sticking out from a hole outside a residential block with a pool of blood next to it.
“A woman was killed here, her son was sitting next to her crying,” said Tamara Lelyk, a 73-year-old cleaning lady.
The shooting down of the airliner has sharply deepened the Ukrainian crisis, in which separatist gunmen in the Russian-speaking east have been fighting government forces since pro-Western protesters in Kiev forced out a pro-Moscow president and Russia annexed Crimea in March.
Sanctions
Putin said a Ukrainian military “tank attack” on Donetsk was “unacceptable” and urged the West to put pressure on Kiev to end hostilities.
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Security Council, said 13 Ukrainian troops were killed in fighting in the east in the last day when “terrorists” attacked the army and their roadblocks 20 times.
The rival sides were now fighting around the city of Lysychansk, some 130 kilometres north-east of Donetsk, he said. Kiev also said it recaptured the adjacent town of Severodonetsk and the rebels confirmed they were forced out.
Shaken by the deaths of nearly 300 people on the Malaysian airliner, Western governments have threatened Russia with stiffer penalties.
