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MH17: Remembering lives lost
Eindhoven
military air base, July 23, 2014: Flowers and a teddy bear are placed
in front of a plane before a ceremony marking the return of the first
bodies of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The bodies
will be taken to a military barracks in the city of Hilversum, where
forensic experts will begin the task of identifying and returning them
to relatives.
Ukrainian soldiers stand next to coffins carrying the remains of the victims during a ceremony at Kharkiv airport.
International experts march towards a plane at Kharkiv airport to accompany the remains of victims to the Netherlands.
Flowers
lie on the tarmac as a Hercules transport aircraft of the Royal Dutch
Air Force prepares to take off from Kharkiv airport.
The Hercules carrying the bodies takes off from Kharkiv airport, as a C17 aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force taxis.
The
Dutch flag flies at half-staff on the Huis ten Bosch Palace in the
Hague, the Netherlands. The country declared an exceptional day of
mourning for the 298 victims of whom 193 were Dutch. 
Preparations are made at St. Joris Church in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, for a prayer service for MH17 victims.
Flowers
are placed at Schiphol airport as Dutch royals meet the planes with
grieving relatives and representatives from the 11 countries that had
citizens among the 298 MH17 victims.
Dutch
King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Prime Minister Mark Rutte stand
together as unidentified bodies are transferred to hearses.
This aerial photo shows people watching from a bridge as a convoy of hearses makes its way from Eindhoven air base to Hilversum.
Flight attendants and mourners gather near
flower bouquets as they pay their respects at Schiphol Airport during a
national day of mourning for the victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines
flight MH17, in Schiphol July 23, 2014. (VOA)
MH17 passenger nationalities (VOA)
Cris Toala Olivares / Reuters
People pay their respects during a national day of mourning for the victims killed in the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 plane disaster, in Amsterdam on July 23, 2014. The bodies of the first victims from a Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine last week arrived back in the Netherlands on Wednesday amid dignified grief tinged with anger. Bells pealed and flags flew at half mast in memory of the 298 people killed when flight MH17 crashed in an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists, in the first national day of mourning since wartime Queen Wilhelmina died in 1962.
A mother and her daughter reflect at the gate of the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks, after bringing flowers to remember the victims killed in the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 plane disaster, in Hilvers
A woman lights a candle near flowers and candles placed in honour of three citizens, a mother, 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son who were among the victims of flight MH17 in Delft, Netherlands, on July 23.
Dutch Embassy employees hold a minute's silence in commemoration of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane accident in front of the Dutch embassy in Kiev, on July 23.
More:
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
- Dutch air safety board said cockpit voice recorder successfully downloaded and contained 'valid data from the flight'
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.
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
Flags - including that of
Malaysia (centre) were seen flying at half mast as the convoy of hearses
made their way from Eindhoven military air base
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.
The
Dutch air safety board said the cockpit voice recorder had been
successfully downloaded and contained 'valid data from the flight'.
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
MH17'S BLACK BOX FLIGHT RECORDERS ARRIVE IN UK FOR ANALYSIS BY BRITISH AIR CRASH INVESTIGATORS
Air crash investigators have been able to download 'valid' information from the flight MH17 black box cockpit voice recorder.
The
Dutch Safety Board which is leading the investigation into the Malaysia
Airlines tragedy said an international team of investigators, working
in Hampshire, had conducted a thorough examination of the cockpit voice
recorder (VCR) .
In a
statement the board said: 'The CVR was damaged but the memory module
was intact. Furthermore no evidence or indications of manipulation of
the CVR was found.
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
'Following the examination, the CVR data was successfully downloaded and contained valid data from the flight.
'The downloaded data have to be further analysed and investigated.'
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.
Critical role: David Cameron tweets that British investigators would be drafted in to examine the black boxes
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.
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.
A convoy of hearses carrying coffins containing
the remains of victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17,
drives from the Eindhoven Airbase to Hilversum
This aerial photo shows people watching from a
bridge a convoy of hearses carrying coffins containing the remains of
victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
People watch from a bridge a convoy of hearses
carrying coffins containing the remains of victims of the downed
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
The first bodies from flight MH17 arrived in the
Netherlands today almost a week after it was shot down over Ukraine
before they were taken to be identified
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.
It
has also emerged that the cockpit is believed to have been sawn in half
while under the control of Russian-backed separatists.
International
monitors said large parts of the cockpit 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 cockpit 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 cockpit 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), told USA Today.
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.
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