Kharkiv (Ukraine):
Dutch experts on Tuesday prepared to fly out some 280 bodies recovered from downed Malaysian flight MH17, after a train carrying the remains arrived in the government-held Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Rebels controlling the crash site released the morgue train under intense international pressure, finally allowing many of the 298 crash victims’ remains to begin the long journey home.
The first bodies are to be flown tomorrow to the Netherlands, which had 193 citizens aboard the doomed flight and is taking the lead in investigating a disaster that has brought Ukraine’s three-month conflict into horrific proximity for countries as far away as Australia and Indonesia.
But that would only be the start of a complex investigation, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned that identification of the bodies alone could take months.
A ceasefire was declared by rival sides at the impact site of the crash, but close by fighting raged on as government troops sought to wrest control of east Ukraine’s industrial heartland from the separatists who launched their bid to join Russia in April.
The rebels—who stand accused of bringing down the passenger aircraft, possibly with a missile supplied by Moscow -- also conceded after days of obstruction to hand the plane’s black boxes to be handed to investigators.
Their concessions came as European foreign ministers met in Brussels to weigh possible new sanctions against Russia for its perceived support of the insurgency rocking ex-Soviet Ukraine.
But national interests risk dividing the bloc, with Britain’s push for an arms embargo putting France—which has a 1.2 billion-euro deal to supply warships to Russia—on the spot.
After intense international focus on what world leaders denounced as a “shambolic” situation at the crash site, rebels handed over two black boxes, which record cockpit activity and flight data, to Malaysian officials.
The rebels also announced a ceasefire within 10 kilometres of the impact site, hours after Kiev’s pro-Western authorities said they would halt all fighting in a broader zone.
The localised truce will at last allow international monitors to examine the vast area, a forensic minefield littered with poignant fragments from hundreds of destroyed lives.
Elsewhere in Ukraine’s east, fighting was continuing with local authorities in the besieged cities of Donetsk and Lugansk reporting 10 civilians killed in 24 hours.
