[VOA News] The Ukrainian government says 219 bodies have been recovered from the site where a Malaysian airliner crashed after being shot down on Thursday, as well as what they believe are parts of 28 additional bodies. That would leave 51 of the people on the plane still unaccounted for.
Also, a European delegation was given access to the bodies and the crash site in a rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine.
There are still conflicting reports over whether pro-Russian rebels or Ukrainian officials have control over the collected remains. According to some sources, rebels took possession of many of them following their collection by personnel from Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry, who were granted access to the site by the separatists.
According to some reports, many of the bodies are currently in three refrigerated railway cars in the town of Torez, not far from the crash site. Quoting a bigwig of the authorities in Kyiv, Ukrainian media are reporting that negotiations are currently underway to have the bodies transported to territory under Ukrainian government control, possibly to the city of Kharkiv.
'Gruesome'
It is a gruesome and sad scene in a Ukrainian farm field, said Michael Bociurkiw of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who spoke to news hounds in Kyiv via mobile phone.
"We are looking right now at engine parts and parts of the fuselage. It appears to me that this could be the main section, the mid-section, of the aircraft. And we are also seeing emergency workers picking over a very difficult patch of impact, where there is a lot of debris and body parts and banged up bodies put together." |