MH17 victims' bodies are finally moved out of conflict zone
Train carrying bodies of victims leaves Torez as plane's black box recorders were due to be handed to Malaysian delegation
Four days after MH17 came crashing down into the fields of eastern Ukraine, a train of refrigerated carriages finally rolled out of the station in the rebel-controlled city of Torez on Monday night carrying the bodies of 282 of the victims.
Bound for the city of Kharkiv, the train's departure from the crash site is likely to bring a small amount of respite to relatives, after a chaotic and controversial clear-up mission complicated by a military conflict rumbling nearby, the summer heat and what at times has appeared to be deliberate obstruction.
The plane's black box recorders were also due to be passed over to a Malaysian delegation in Donetsk late on Monday evening. But nevertheless, much remained unclear. Fighting broke out in Donetsk during the day on Monday, and the train left without three Dutch experts who were meant to be travelling with the bodies.
Earlier in the day, the trio of experts, the first to reach the train holding the bodies paused, hands clasped together and heads bowed, before clambering up to the grey train carriages to inspect the interior. One of the three, Peter Van Vliet, said the experience had given him goosebumps, despite the sweltering heat.
In a whispered conversation on the station platform, observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)urged the rebels to do everything in their power to speed up the process of moving the bodies out of the conflict zone "This train must move today, it cannot wait any longer. It will not be good for anyone – not the experts, not the families, not you," Alexander Hug, deputy of the special monitoring mission to Ukraine, was overheard saying to the rebels.
At 7pm local time, the train did indeed pull out of the station. According to an official statement from the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, it was due to travel to Kharkiv, a major city fully under Kiev's control, where a large team of international experts have gathered. It is expected that the bodies of the victims will be loaded onto a transport plane and flown back to the Netherlands as soon as possible.
There is much work still to be done in Donetsk and at the crash site itself, but renewed fighting near the city's train station between pro-government forces and rebels, which left several civilians dead on Monday, provides an additional obstacle for any international experts attempting to reach the site.
Nevertheless, a delegation of around a dozen Malaysians arrived on Monday, and had negotiations with Alexander Borodai, the self-styled prime minister of the "Donetsk People's Republic". The talks, on the top floor of the occupied regional administration building in Donetsk, were guarded by armed rebels, and a number of the Malaysians seen exiting the talks refused to comment.
"Forget about it," said one, when asked what they had been discussing. However, discussions over the fate of the plane's black box recorders were clearly part of the meeting, as the Malaysian prime minister later announced that the separatists would hand over the recorders to a Malaysian delegation in Donetsk.
Borodai arrived at the Park Inn hotel to meet the Malaysians shortly before 10pm local time but it was unclear if he had the black box recorders with him. Ukraine's security services had previously released recordings of what it said were rebel leaders coordinating a ground search for the black boxes and insisting that they not be given to international leaders, as Moscow wanted to get them first. The rebels denied that the recordings were genuine.
Getting appropriate permissions for international experts to enter the war-torn region has proved problematic. Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE, called the process a "logistical nightmare". The three Dutch specialists, who travelled from Kharkiv, said that they had been accompanied part of the way by the Ukrainian army before being passed over to an escort of rebels.
Monday's violence made Donetsk an even more daunting venue to travel for international experts hoping to examine the MH17 crash site. The city's mayor advised all residents to stay indoors, the streets were largely deserted and there were reports that damage to infrastructure meant that the city would run out of water in a matter of days.
While the rebels have been heavily criticised for blocking access to the crash site, it was the Ukrainian army that seemed intent on disrupting expert work on Monday, as they apparently launched an offensive against rebel positions close to Donetsk railway station, as well as in other towns across the region.
The Ukrainian authorities said they were not targeting residential areas. "We are coming to the city, special assault groups are working there," Vladislav Seleznev, spokesman of anti-terrorist operation, told the Guardian. "Within city boundaries we are not using heavy artillery," he added.
However, there were a number of cases where what appeared to be Grad rocket fire had landed in residential areas. At one school building near the railway station terrified locals hid in the basement all morning, and two men were killed by shrapnel in the playground. A local named Sergei, who lives near the school, said he had helped to load dead bodies onto a truck provided by the rebels.
Adding to the sense of chaos, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's national security council in Kiev, denied that the Ukrainian army was responsible for explosions in central Donetsk but said small groups of partisans could be engaging the rebels.
"We have strict orders not to use air strikes and artillery in the city. If there is fighting in the city, we have information that there is a small self-organised group who are fighting with the terrorists," he said.
The Ukrainian president ordered a ceasefire across a 40km (24-mile) radius from the crash site, but this does not include Donetsk, which is further out.
The fighting near the station was an "added complication" for moving the train with the bodies, said the OSCE. They also said the body bags inside the train were tagged using a numbering system and stored at a temperature between 0C and -5C. Experts from several countries including the UK are in Kharkiv. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said the swift return of the bodies was his "number one priority" at a news conference on Monday.
With most of the bodies now removed from the site, attention will turn to the other tasks of the crash investigation, most importantly attempting to find some proof of what exactly brought the plane down.
David Gleave, a former aviation safety investigator, corroborated pictures that appeared to show shrapnel damage from a missile to a section of fuselage from the stricken aircraft. "The markings are consistent with something external hitting the aeroplane," he said, describing the indentations as indicative of a missile strike.
"It looks like there are markings on the external to the internal of the aircraft, meaning it's not a bomb blowing outwards. That's not the main bit where the missile hit, it's the periphery of the explosion. It looks like secondary damage."
In spite of the delay in investigators arriving at the crash site, Gleave said it would still be possible to trace the manufacturer of the missile by forensically examining bits of wreckage and human remains for chemical traces.
"I'm not convinced [the contamination of the crash site] is quite as bad as people say. If it's a missile then all the conventional stuff we need for data-gathering goes out of the window. A black box isn't going to tell you it was a missile," he said.
The cleanup operation, which has been roundly criticised by the international community who fear pro-Russia rebels are contaminating the site to cover up signs of their involvement, was cautiously praised by Van Vliet, at least when it came to the collection of the bodies.
Given the hot weather, the size of the crash site and the military operations going on in the vicinity, the operation was "very difficult" and he was impressed with the efforts of local emergency workers and volunteers, who have spent three days sifting corpses and body parts from the crash site. He added though, that the area needed a "full, forensic sweep" by proper experts.
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