Two military transport planes carrying 40 coffins bearing victims of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 landed yesterday in the southern city of Eindhoven, while pro-Russian rebels shot down two fighter jets in Ukraine’s restive east as fighting flared in the region.
Six days after the Boeing 777 was shot down over the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, the first bodies finally arrived in the Netherlands, the country that bore the heaviest toll in the crash that killed all 298 passengers and crew.
A Dutch Hercules C-130 that Dutch government spokesman Lodewijk Hekking says carried 16 coffins was the first to land, closely followed by an Australian C-17 Globemaster plane carrying 24 coffins.
Photo: AFP
British investigators began work on a pair of “black boxes” to retrieve data on the flight’s last minutes, while Dutch officials said they have taken charge of the stalled investigation of the airline disaster and pleaded for unhindered access to the wreckage.
Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch said that Dutch authorities had delivered the plane’s voice and data recorders to the agency’s base at Farnborough, southern England, where the information will be downloaded.
Experts will also check for signs of tampering.
The two military transport planes departed Ukraine at midday, and landed at Eindhoven Air Base where the flights were met by Dutch King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other government officials.
Hundreds of victims’ relatives were also there, Hekking said.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said two fighter planes were shot down about 30km south of the site of the Malaysia Airlines wreckage.
The separatist Donetsk People’s Republic said in a statement on its Web site that one of the pilots was killed and another was being sought by rebel fighters.
While the insurgents deny having missiles capable of hitting a jetliner at cruising altitude, rebel leader Alexander Borodai has said that separatist fighters do have Strela-10M ground-to-air missiles which are capable of hitting targets up to an altitude of 3,500m.
Separately, senior US intelligence officials on Tuesday said that Russia was responsible for “creating the conditions” that led crash, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement.
The officials, who briefed reporters under ground rules that their names not be used, said the plane was likely shot down by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The officials cited intercepts, satellite photographs and social media postings by separatists, some of which have been authenticated by US experts.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
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