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Version 2 Version 3
Bodies of Plane Crash Victims Moved Out of Combat Area Bodies and Black Boxes From Malaysia Flight Arrive in Ukraine City
(about 4 hours later)
KHARKIV, Ukraine — A train carrying the bodies of victims from the Malaysia Airlines jet downed by a missile last week arrived Tuesday morning in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv after a 17-hour journey out of lawless territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels. KHARKIV, Ukraine — Bodies of victims and the flight recorders from the Malaysia Airlines jetliner destroyed by a missile last week over eastern Ukraine were delivered by a lumbering freight train on Tuesday to Kharkiv, a city controlled by the central government, completing the initial phases of an agreement with pro-Russian rebels negotiated by Malaysia.
Pushed by a diesel locomotive, five gray refrigerated wagons and a red passenger car crawled into the grounds of a decrepit Soviet-era tank factory shortly after noon, completing the first and most difficult stage of a long journey home for victims of the crash. But international anger was still swelling over the mistreatment of the victims — whose corpses lay for days strewn across a wheat field — the pilfering of their belongings, and the removal of possible evidence that could determine the weapon used to destroy the plane.
Ukrainian workers had to clear the track of mud and weeds to allow the train to pass along a long-disused stretch of rail leading to the Malyshev Factory, built to manufacture the Soviet T-34 tank and other military equipment. Ukrainian, European and American officials have said a Russian-made antiaircraft missile supplied to the rebels downed the jetliner. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the rebel leaders whose cause he has supported have strongly denied any responsibility. But the rage aimed in their direction was reflected in the words of Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia, whose country lost 37 citizens and residents.
The work on the tracks, however, did not prevent the train from stalling just a few yards from its final destination. Workers threw sand on the tracks to give the locomotive more traction. “Anyone who has been watching the latest footage would appreciate that there is still a long, long way to go. After the crime comes the cover-up,” Mr. Abbott said, in reaction to images of separatist militants seen rummaging through the wreckage. “What we have seen is evidence tampering on an industrial scale and obviously that has to stop.”
The train was met by police forensic experts and other representatives of countries that had citizens on the doomed flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Security guards kept reporters outside the factory gates, and it was not immediately clear whether the bodies would be kept in Kharkiv for preliminary examination or swiftly transferred to a nearby airport for transport out of Ukraine. Despite the agreement with Malaysia, heavily armed rebels who control the crash site have so far prevented foreign and Ukrainian experts from examining the wreckage or moving it to a more secure location.
Mohammed Saleh, a member of a Malaysian rescue team in Kharkiv to help handle the repatriation of bodies, said the corpses would “most probably” be flown to Amsterdam later on Tuesday. Malaysia lost 43 citizens on the doomed plane. Volodymyr Groysman, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, who is leading a Ukrainian team handling the Malaysia Airlines disaster, said that the pro-Russian rebels had slowed the repatriation of bodies and efforts to investigate responsibility. “Unfortunately, it has taken a long time for the train to get here from the crash site because of obstructions created by the bandits and terrorists,” he said in Kharkiv, using the Ukraine government’s terminology for the pro-Russia separatists.
The Netherlands, whose citizens made up two-thirds of the 298 passengers and crew aboard the plane, has sent a Hercules transport plane to Kharkiv. Australia has also sent a plane. Flight 17 was hit at 33,000 feet en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur last Thursday, exploding and crashing about 20 miles from the Russia border. All 298 people aboard were killed: two-thirds of them Dutch, and the rest from more than half a dozen countries.
Ukrainian officials said that the train contained nearly all of the bodies of those killed when a surface-to-air missile felled Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Thursday. The remains had been held for days by pro-Russian separatists at the crash site. The train carrying the bodies of the victims, in five gray refrigerated wagons, arrived in Kharkiv after a 17-hour journey out of the lawless territory of the crash site. Also aboard the train, according to foreign officials, were the so-called black boxes, which were handed over by rebel leaders to Malaysian emissaries on Monday in the separatist movement’s self-proclaimed capital of Donetsk.
Rebels released the train Monday evening, bringing to end a long standoff that had brought international condemnation on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the separatists whose cause he has supported. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said in a Twitter message on Tuesday that the Malaysians had asked forensics experts in Britain to investigate the contents of the black boxes, which could provide some clues into what was happening aboard the aircraft immediately before its destruction.
The Netherlands sent a Hercules transport plane to Kharkiv, and Australia said it was also sending a plane. All the bodies will be taken to the Netherlands first and then returned to their home countries once they have been identified.
Ester Naber, a Dutch police spokeswoman, said the victims would all be repacked in new body bags, placed in wooden coffins, and flown to the Netherlands in a process that would likely start Wednesday. She said the bodies would be flown to a military airfield at Eindhoven and transferred to a military base at Hilversum.
The victims will be returned to their home countries once identifications have been completed, a process that Ms. Naber said “could take weeks or even months depending on the state of the bodies.”
In Kiev, the Ukraine capital, a government spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said Ukrainian forces had seized control of several small strategic towns in eastern Ukraine, blocking the main roads between the regional capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are the two biggest remaining strongholds of the Russian-backed insurgents.
There was no independent corroboration of Mr. Lysenko’s assertions. But severing the connection between the two insurgent-held cities has been a major goal of the government forces seeking to quell the separatist rebellion that has torn eastern Ukraine by violence since early April, and it suggested that the Ukrainian military was making advances even as the government and insurgents declared a cease-fire zone around the wreckage site.
Fierce fighting also was reported in areas north and west of each of the two cities. Mr. Lysenko, the spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that three soldiers had been killed in fighting in Kamyanka, in the Donetsk region.