Dutch Officials Manage to Inspect Some Bodies at MH17 Crash Site
Armed, pro-Russian rebels continued to block access to the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine over the weekend, but the BBC reports that three Dutch investigators were able to inspect bodies found at the site today. Their findings haven't been released, but they said the rebel-controlled train holding the bodies may soon leave the rebel-held town of Torez.
When asked Sunday afternoon where the train was headed, its driver said he had not been given a destination.
"Nobody knows, and no one will say," he said.
The scene at the train and the crash site has been described as "chaos" — the smell of decomposing bodies is getting worse, and the "incoherent recovery effort is being carried out by motley groups of mostly untrained people."
World leaders are fed up. Secretary of State John Kerry said, "what's happening is really grotesque," and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott noted the site looks more like a "garden clean-up" than an actual investigation. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has suggested the Dutch take over somehow.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told his parliament, "It is clear that Russia must use her influence on the separatists to improve the situation on the ground."
During his rounds on the Sunday shows yesterday, Kerry pointed to the likelihood that pro-Russian rebels, with help from Russia, shot down the plane last Thursday with a surface-to-air missile.
Update: the rebels said today they'd hand MH17's black boxes over to Malaysian investigators in Ukraine. The train holding the bodies is on its way to Kharkiv, Ukraine, where it will be transferred to Dutch authorities.
[Image via AP]