HRABOVE, Ukraine (AP) — A refrigerated train carrying Malaysia Airlines victims’ bodies pulled away
Monday from a rebel-held town in eastern Ukraine, one small step forward in easing the agony of their
grieving families.
In an emotional inspection hours earlier, Dutch experts had called for a full forensic sweep of the
Flight 17 crash site and told the armed separatists controlling the area that the train must be allowed
to leave as soon as possible.
Four days after someone shot the Boeing 777 out of the sky, killing 298 people, pressure was growing on
Russian President Vladimir Putin to rein in the insurgents and allow a full-scale investigation into the
downing of the plane. The U.S., Ukraine and others say Moscow has armed the rebels, a charge Russia
denies.
In Washington, President Barack Obama demanded that international investigators get full access to the
crash site and accused the separatists of removing evidence and blocking investigators.
“What exactly are they trying to hide?” Obama asked, a day after the U.S. presented what it called
“powerful” evidence that the rebels had shot down the plane with a Russian surface-to-air missile.
At the U.N. in New York, the Security Council was voting later Monday on an Australia-proposed resolution
demanding international access to the crash site and a cease-fire around the area. Australian Prime
Minister Tony Abbott said his country would view a Russian veto of the resolution “very badly,” adding
that “no reasonable person” could object to its wording.
Fighting flared again between the separatists and government troops in the eastern rebel-held city of
Donetsk, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) to the west of the crash site. City authorities said battles took
place Monday near the town’s airport. An AP reporter heard several explosions and saw smoke rising from
that direction.
After the train with the bodies left the town of Torez, two military jets also flew overhead and black
smoke was seen rising in the distance.
Fighting began in mid-April in eastern Ukraine after Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean Peninsula
a month earlier.
There is great concern in the Netherlands about the bodies, since 192 of the plane’s 298 victims were
Dutch and another was Dutch-American. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Monday that repatriating the
bodies was his “No. 1 priority.”
An Associated Press reporter saw the train with the bodies leaving Torez, a rebel-held town 15 kilometers
(9 miles) from the plane crash site, and overheard rebels saying it was heading for the rebel-held town
of Ilovaysk. The Ukrainian government later said the train was eventually heading to a crisis center in
the government-controlled eastern city of Kharkiv.
In farm fields near the eastern village of Hrabove, Peter van Vliet, leader of the group from the Dutch
National Forensic Investigations Team visiting Ukraine, said seeing the crash site gave him goose bumps
despite the heat. Workers recovered 21 more bodies from the site Monday, bringing the total to 272
bodies, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said.
The Dutch team — which specializes in victim recovery and identification — saw some victims’ remains that
had not yet been removed from the crash site. They also inspected piles of passenger luggage, suggesting
that they be put in a container and shipped out.
At the Torez train station, the Dutch investigators stood for a moment with their heads bowed and their
hands clasped before climbing aboard to inspect the train cars, surrounded by armed rebels.
AP journalists said the smell of decay was overwhelming at the Torez train station and many with the
inspectors wore masks or pressed cloths to their faces on the sunny, 84 degree Fahrenheit (29 degrees
Celsius) day. A Ukrainian train engineer told The Associated Press that a power outage had hit the rail
cars’ refrigeration system for several hours overnight.
In Kharkiv, another team of international experts arrived, including 23 Dutch, three Australians, two
Germans, two Americans, and one person from the U.K.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s prime minister said the rebels agreed to hand over both black boxes from
Flight 17 to Malaysian investigators in Ukraine later Monday.
The U.S. evidence that the rebels were involved in downing the plan included video of a rocket launcher,
one surface-to-air missile missing, leaving the likely launch site; imagery showing the firing; phone
calls claiming credit for the missile strike and phone recordings said to reveal a cover-up at the crash
site.
“A buildup of extraordinary circumstantial evidence … it’s powerful here,” said U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry. “Russia is supporting these separatists. Russia is arming these separatists. Russia is
training these separatists.”
Putin lashed out against the criticism Monday, accusing others of exploiting the downing of the plane for
“mercenary objectives.”
Putin said Russia was doing everything possible to allow a team of experts from the International Civil
Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, to investigate the scene. He again criticized Ukrainian government
authorities in Kiev, saying they had reignited the fighting with the rebels after a unilateral
cease-fire expired without progress on peace talks.
“If fighting in eastern Ukraine had not been renewed on June 28, this tragedy would not have happened,”
Putin said. “Nobody should or does have a right to use this tragedy for such mercenary objectives.”
The head of counterintelligence for Ukraine’s SBU security service, Vitaliy Najda, has said the Buk
missile launchers came from Russia and called on Russia to supply the names of the service personnel
“who brought about the launch of the missile” so they could be questioned. He said the rebels could not
have operated the sophisticated weapon without Russian help but did not provide specific evidence for
his claim.
In Moscow, Russian officials offered evidence Monday to counter U.S. claims that the rebels were
responsible for shooting down the jet. The Defense Ministry showed photos they said proved that
Ukrainian surface-to-air systems were operating in the area before the crash — nine times alone on
Thursday, the day the plane was brought down.
Russian officials also said they had evidence that a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet had flown “between 3 to
5 kilometers (2 to 3 miles)” from the Malaysia Airlines jet.
“(The plane) is armed with air-to-air R-60 rockets, which can hit a target from a distance of up to 12
kilometers (7 miles) and guaranteed within 5 kilometers (3 miles),” said the chief of Russia’s General
staff, Andrei Kartopolov.
The defense ministry officials also insisted that Russia had not given the rebels any surface-to-air
missiles and added they have no evidence that any missiles were launched at all. They asked the U.S. to
share any satellite images of the launch.
In the Netherlands, victims’ families were being consoled Monday by the Dutch royals.
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McHugh contributed from Kiev. AP staff writers Laura Mills and Nataliya Vasilyeva reported from Moscow
and Mike Corder contributed from The Hague, Netherlands.