Tears for the MH17 Crash Victims: Dutch Royals and Grieving Relatives Watch
-as First Bodies Arrive Back in Holland in Dignified Ceremony that Shames Russia
- Bodies of around 200 international victims of the MH17 plane massacre have arrived in Eindhoven, Netherlands
- Aircraft, which left Ukraine this morning, were greeted by grieving relatives and members of the Dutch royal family
- Torturous identification will now take place, which officials have warned is likely to take several months to complete
- There is concern over the total number of bodies that have been released by pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine
- Separatists claim they placed 282 complete corpses and body parts from 16 others on board refrigerated morgue train
- But Dutch officials claim they counted only 200 victims, meaning a third of MH17's passengers may still be missing
- Today MH17's black boxes were delivered to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch base in Farnborough, Hampshire
Daily Mail UK, 23 July 2014
The first bodies of those killed in the MH17 crash have arrived in the Netherlands to be greeted by grieving relatives and the Dutch royal family.
The remains of around 40 international victims of the Malaysia Airlines tragedy left Ukraine's Kharkiv airport on two military planes earlier today, ahead of a painstaking identification process which is expected to take several months.
The dignified reception at Eindhoven airport is in stark contrast to the treatment of the victims' remains in eastern Ukraine in the days after the crash, where pro-Russian rebels left corpses to decay in the summer heat in body bags dumped around the crash site.
Among those attending the solemn ceremony were King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, who held on to each other's hands as the bodies were removed from the transporter aircraft. At several points the Dutch Queen was seen wiping tears from her face.
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Upset: Queen Maxima of the Netherlands (pictured centre alongside her husband King Willem-Alexander) wipes away a tear as the bodies of victims of the MH17 crash are removed from an air force transport plane and placed in hearses at Eindhoven airport
Arrival: The first bodies of those killed in the MH17 massacre have arrived in Eindhoven to be greeted by grieving relatives and members of the Dutch royal family.
The remains of around 40 international victims of the Malaysia Airlines tragedy left Ukraine's Kharkiv airport on two planes earlier today
The dignified reception at Eindhoven airport was in stark contrast to the treatment of the victims' remains in eastern Ukraine in the days after the crash
Tears: Members of the Dutch royal family - including King Willem-Alexander (second from left) and Queen Maxima (centre)
- were in Eindhoven to meet the plane. Senior Dutch politicians and the grieving relatives of the 298 victims were also in attendance
Finally shown respect: A coffin containing the body of an MH17 crash victim is placed in the back of a hearse at Eindhoven airport
Released: The bodies of 40 victims arrived at Eindhoven airport on two military planes
- one of them this Dutch Air Force C-130 Hercules - earlier this afternoon
A convoy of hearses containing the remains of 40 victims of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 disaster drives past international flags as it leaves Eindhoven airport en route to a military base in nearby Hilversum
Members of the Dutch royal family - including King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima - were in Eindhoven to meet the plane, alongside the grieving relatives of the 298 people - including 10 Britons - killed when the Boeing 777-200 was shot down last Thursday.
The Dutch government has also declared today a national day of mourning.
200 bodies were released by the rebels yesterday and taken by train to the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv, raising questions about the condition of the 98 other bodies.
Two military aircraft flew these remains to Eindhoven this afternoon, where they were met by the royals, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, and relatives.
The Netherlands government will hold a minute's silence before a motorcade takes the bodies to the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks, where the process of identifying them will finally begin.
This morning the black boxes from flight MH17 arrived in Farnborough, Hampshire, where a team of British investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch will analyse its contents for clues about what happened in the moments before the plane was shot out the sky.
Respect: King Willem-Alexander (second left) Queen Maxima (third left) and Prime Minister Mark Rutte (third right) observe a minute
of silence during a ceremony to mark the return of the first bodies of passengers and crew killed in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
Remembrance: Stewardesses at Schiphol airport observe one-minute of silence in remembrance of the victims of flight MH17
The whole of Schiphol airport came to a standstill for one minute this afternoon in tribute to the victims of flight MH17. The doomed Malaysia Airlines plane departed from the airport last Thursday
Passengers waiting to board planes at Schiphol airport stand still during a minute's silence
Tribute: There was a minute's silence before a motorcade drove the bodies
to Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks, where the process of identifying them will begin
Salute: A Dutch military musician plays the Last Post at the airbase in Eindhoven as the victims' bodies are placed into hearses
Sombre: Hearses are seen lined up at Eindhoven airport to transport the bodies to Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks, where the process of identifying them will begin
A coffin containing the remains of an MH17 crash victim is carried off the cargo plane at Eindhoven airport
Reception: The king and queen of the Netherlands lead mourners as the first victims of the disaster are repatriated from the Ukraine
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MH17'S BLACK BOX FLIGHT RECORDERS ARRIVE IN UK FOR ANALYSIS BY BRITISH AIR CRASH INVESTIGATORS
Black box flight recorders from the downed Air Malaysian plane have arrived for analysis by UK crash investigators.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said the black boxes had been delivered by Dutch safety authorities to the AAIB's headquarters at Farnborough in Hampshire.
The AAIB team will now go through the information from the ****pit voice recorder which will give them two hours of pilots' conversations as well as studying the contents of the flight data recorder (FDR).
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***Information: Four days after flight MH17 crashed from the sky over Ukraine, rebels finally handed over the
Boeing 777's flight recorders (pictured). The black boxes have now arrived in the UK for analysis by British air crash investigators
Quote:
It is thought that the AAIB will be able to send details of their findings to the Dutch within 24 hours - giving the experts in the Netherlands further information of the last moments of the doomed Boeing 777 as it fell to earth in eastern Ukraine.
As the UK investigators poured over the black boxes, bodies from the crash site were arriving in Netherlands where the country's king and queen were taking part in a national day of mourning.
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima are in Eindhoven with relatives of the 298 people - including 10 Britons - killed in the disaster.
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Critical role: David Cameron tweets that British investigators would be drafted in to examine the black boxes
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An unconfirmed number of bodies were released by the rebels yesterday and taken to the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv by train.
Two military aircraft will fly some of them to Eindhoven this afternoon, where they will be met by the royals, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and relatives.
The Netherlands government said a minute's silence will be held before a motorcade takes them to the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks, where the process of identifying them will begin.
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Now they have arrived in Eindhoven, the bodies will be taken to the Kaporaal van Oudheusden military barracks in Hilversum, around 65 miles away.
'As soon as a victim is identified first and foremost the family will be informed and no one else. That can take weeks or months,' said Mr Rutte.
In the central Dutch city of Utrecht, a team of 150 investigators has been pulled together to begin the grisly and painstaking task of trying to identify the victims.
They include police officers, military personnel, forensic dentists and other medics, who have been tasked with collecting samples from close relatives around the country to help identify the 193 Dutch victims.
Jos van Roo, the team leader of the Dutch National Forensic Investigations Team, known as the LTFO, told the Wall Street Journal:
'We have been collecting DNA samples, hair, fingerprints, information about scars or tattoos or moles.'
He said this information would then be handed the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) which will use sophisticated software called Bonaparte to match those samples to the victims.
The NFI said this process was completed in around 30 days during an investigation into a 2010 plane crash in Libya, which killed 104 people.
But with nearly three times as many bodies to examine - and others yet to be found - it suggests this investigation could take many months.
Mr van Roo said the identification process has been so distressing - even for experienced investigators - that the team is being assessed by a psychologist on a daily basis.
Grim journey: A refrigerated lorry containing the coffins of 40 MH17 victims was seen arriving at Khirkov airport this morning. The bodies have since been loaded on to aircraft, reading to be transported to the Netherlands
Journey: The first bodies of those killed in the MH17 massacre have been loaded on to a cargo plane ready to be transported to Eindhoven in the Netherlands for a tortuous identification process that could take months
A worker uses a forklift to load bodies on to the Royal Australian Air Force Boeing C-17 plane, ready to be transported to the Netherlands
Preparation: The bodies of around 200 international victims of the Malaysia Airlines tragedy have already been transported by train from rebel-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine to the government-controlled Kharkiv airport (pictured)
Ready: A transport plane that will be used to carry the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine, is parked on the tarmac before heading to the Netherlands
Tribute: Ukrainian officials attend a farewell ceremony next the transport plane that will be used to carry the remains of some of the victims of MH17 later today
The number of bodies on board the plane taking the bodies to the Netherlands is causing grieving relatives around the world fresh anguish after it emerged that as many as a third of the passengers could still be missing.
As the makeshift morgue arrived in the ‘safe’ Ukrainian city of Kharkiv yesterday rebel commanders claimed it contained 282 bodies and 87 body parts from an additional 16 people.
This would have accounted for all of the 298 murdered when the Boeing 777 was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile last week.
However, after carrying out a body count last night, Dutch forensic experts found the number to be ‘significantly less’ than the figure claimed by separatist leader Alexander Borodai.
The head of the Dutch team leading the investigation, Jain Tuinder, said he estimated just 200 bodies had arrived in Kharkiv as well as a number of unidentified body parts.
Mr Tuinder vowed to recover the others, saying: ‘They will be found. We have to find them... We will not leave until every remain has left this country so we will have to go on and bargain again with the people over there.’
Ceremony: A coffin containing the body of an MH17 victim is loaded onto a plane for transport to the Netherlands
Solemn: Four bodies are carried up to a transport plane during a ceremony at Kharkiv airport this morning.
The bodies are being flown to the Netherlands after being recovered from the MH17 crash site
Salute: Dignitaries from the Netherlands, (Hans Docter, the Dutch Ambassador, third from left) and Australia (ambassador Gene Dunn, left of Mr Docter; Colonel Peter Steel, saluting in black hat; and retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, saluting in green hat) watch as the coffin of an MH17 victim is carried towards the plane
Heading to the Netherlands: Honour guards load a coffin of one of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 on to a transport plane
Yesterday morning a train pulled into a station in the government-held city of Kharkiv, where the Dutch investigators took charge of the bodies.
A minute’s silence was held before the doors opened and international investigators finally began the gruesome task of trying to identify those inside.
There had been fears the bodies, including the ten Britons killed, would be used as a bargaining chip by pro-Russian separatists – believed to be behind the atrocity.
The train’s 185-mile journey from the crash site in the rebel-held village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine, took 17 hours.
According to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, there are still human remains lying on the crash site.
'We observed the presence of smaller body parts at the site,' OSCE spokesman, Michael Bociurkiw, told a briefing in Ukraine's eastern city of Donetsk after his group inspected the site today.
He said all recovery efforts seem to have ended but that at the site his group saw a plastic bag with some human remains left behind while Malaysian experts noticed a strong smell indicating the likely presence of more remains in another spot.
'We've never really seen that intensive combing over the site - people arm in arm going over the fields,' Bociurkiw said, adding there was effectively no security at the site and that so far only a small number of international experts visited it.
The Train Carrying 282 Victims Arrives in Ukrainian City Kharkiv
It has also emerged that the ****pit is believed to have been sawn in half while under the control of Russian-backed separatists.
International monitors said large parts of the ****pit and every part of the fuselage were carried off questioning why such important pieces of evidence has been tampered with.
The separatists and Russia have denied shooting down the plane, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
However, the ****pit was found in a section of the crash site which had been cordoned off for the first two days after the plane went down. Witnesses claim the ****pit had been cut in half with diesel-powered saws.
'The rear part of the aircraft, one of the biggest intact pieces, has definitely been hacked into,' Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the group of international monitors from the Organize for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said
The investigation has been all the more challenging after rebel militia were accused of allowing the crash site's desecration and obstructing the process of recovering the bodies of the 298 victims.
In some cases, remains have been left out for more than two days in sweltering heat and to compound matters the refrigeration unit on the train carrying them to Donetsk reportedly broke down.
Tragic journey: A Dutch C130 aircraft carrying 16 bodies leaves Ukrainian soil bound for the Netherlands following a ceremony at Kharkiv aiport this morning. The plane is the first of a series of flights to the Netherlands transporting MH17 victims from the crash site
Convoy: A transport plane carrying some of the MH17 victims departs for the Netherlands from Kharkiv this morning.
Another military cargo plane loaded with remains is seen of the runway, preparing to take off later today
Pro-Russian separatists - who stand accused of bringing down the aircraft, possibly with a missile supplied by Moscow - bowed to a furious clamour for the bodies and black boxes to be handed to investigators five days after the crash.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the boxes were handed over to the Malaysian team in Donetsk at 9pm Ukraine time last night.
The small handing over ceremony has finally solved the question as to what had happened to the two vital devices.
It was not immediately known what the Malaysian team would do with the black boxes, but there was speculation they would pass the boxes on to experts with experience of reading the data.
Mr Najib revealed that in recent days the team had been working quietly behind the scenes to establish contact with 'those' - a reference to the rebels - in charge of the MH17 crash site.
The contact was finally made - but he made it clear it had not been easy.
'Under difficult and fluid circumstances, we have been discussing the problems that have occupied us all - securing vital evidence from the aircraft, launching an independent investigation and above all recovering the remains of those who lost their lives.'
Emotional: A sign displayed inside Amsterdam's Schipol airport
- from where MH17 took off - expresses sympathy to everyone facing a loss as a result of the crash
Mourning: The Dutch flag flies at half mast on the parliament building in The Hague.
The Dutch government has declared today a day of national mourning for the victims of the MH187 disaster
Flags fly at half mast over the Dutch parliament in The Hague. The Netherlands government said a minute's silence will be held before
a motorcade takes the bodies to the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks near Eindhoven, where the process of identifying them can begin
In his first detailed response to criticism of Russia's role in the crisis, President Vladimir Putin called on Western powers not to meddle in Russia's domestic affairs and said steps were needed to strengthen the country's military capabilities because of moves by NATO and to protect the economy from 'external threats'.
The Kremlin leader did, however, say that Russia would use its influence with separatists in east Ukraine to allow a full investigation into the downing of a Malaysian airliner, but said the West must put pressure on Kiev to end hostilities.
Meanwhile, David Cameron has warned other European countries they must all ‘share the burden’ of imposing tougher sanctions on Russia for ‘fomenting’ the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine.
The Prime Minister admits that the UK economy could suffer from curbs on financial deals with Russia, but insists the consequences of failing to act could be far worse.
Foreign ministers from across the EU meet in Brussels today to discuss imposing sanctions on named companies and individuals, but Britain wants to go further with embargoes on dealings with the Russian defence, banking, energy and aviation industries.
VIDEOS
First Bodies of MH17 Victims Leave Ukraine on Transport Plane
The Train Carrying 282 Victims Arrives in Ukrainian City Kharkiv