According to reports, more than 190 bodies of the 298 people aboard a downed Malaysian airliner have been taken from the field in eastern Ukraine where they had been lying since July 17.
Both Russian and Ukrainian news agencies reported on July 20 that at least 196 bodies have been removed from the crash site.
Some reports said it was unclear where the bodies had been taken but the Reuters news agency said railway workers claimed at least some of the bodies had been taken to refrigeration wagons at the train station in Torez, some 15 kilometers from the crash site.
Ukrainian emergency services spokeswoman Nataliya Bystro said government workers and rebels had gathered 196 bodies but she added that the rebels then took to the bodies to an unknown location.
Russian TV channel Rossiya 24 reported the bodies had been taken to the morgue in the city of Donetsk.
There were also reports that a local separatist leader, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Deputy Premier Andrei Purgin, has given a guarantee of safety to international experts to visit the site of the crash if Kyiv agrees to a truce.
A monitoring team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been able to visit the site briefly two times, on July 19 and July 20, but members of the group said separatist fighters treated the monitors rudely and did not allow them full access to the crash scene.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Security Council, Andriy Lysenko, told a July 20 news conference that pro-Russian separatists were “doing everything to hide the evidence of the involvement of Russian missiles in the shooting down of that airliner.”
Lysenko also claimed that Russia is continuing to supply the separatists with “heavy weaponry.”
Dutch Outrage
In the Netherlands, where the ill-fated Malaysian airliner departed the day it was shot down, church services called for prayers for those killed and their relatives.
Most of the passengers aboard the plane, at least 193, were Dutch citizens.
The chairman of the Dutch Bishops Conference, Cardinal Wim Eijk, called on worshippers to “pray for strength and courage for the relatives” of those lost in the plane tragedy.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has expressed outrage at reports that the bodies of at least some of those killed when the Malaysian airliner was shot down have been rifled by looters and that attempts have been made to use credit cards belonging to the deceased.
Rutte has made several phone calls to Russian President Vladimir Putin expressing his disgust at the situation at the crash scene and calling on Putin to use his influence to convince the separatists in eastern Ukraine to cooperate with international recovery efforts and an investigation.
Outrage has been growing at the delay in allowing representatives of Malaysia Airlines, international air safety experts ,and others to access the site and properly retrieve the bodies of the deceased and conduct an investigation into the causes of the crash.
Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbot criticized the situation at the crash scene as being “absolutely chaotic.”
More than 30 Australian citizens and permanent residents were aboard the Malaysian airliner.
At a church service Abbot attended, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney Peter Comensoli called the tragedy “the outcome of a trail of human evil.”
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on July 20 that his country will seek to “get our European partners to agree to go further in terms of sanctions if Russia hasn’t radically changed its position” by July 22 when the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council meets.