The leader of pro-Russian
rebels in Donetsk said Saturday he believed the Malaysian commercial
jet that crashed in eastern Ukraine was shot down, but Alexander Borodai
reiterated his denial that his forces did it.
Two days after Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 crashed to earth in eastern Ukraine, the grim task of
gathering the remains of some of the 298 victims of the disaster in
body bags ready for removal was under way.
Artillery fire could be
heard in the near distance from the crash scene, where a team of
observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
gained access Saturday for a second day.
OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw,
briefing reporters from the scene, said the observers were still being
denied access to certain areas but that their movements were freer than
the previous day, when they were met with hostility by rebels.
He said that experts now
have professional body bags and are gathering body parts in them. The
bags are being left by the road for collection.
The fields where the
plane came down Thursday, near the town of Torez, are in a volatile
rebel-controlled area of the eastern Donetsk region, making access to
the scattered debris and body parts difficult.
The United States said a
surface-to-air missile, possibly fired by pro-Russian rebels, took down
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The plane, which had 298 people aboard
from 11 nations, was traveling from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to the
Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
Since the crash, the
Ukrainian government and pro-Russia rebels have traded bitter
accusations over who was responsible and what has been done since.
A rebel leader denied
claims Saturday by the Ukrainian government that the rebels had already
removed 38 bodies from the scene and taken them to a morgue in the rebel
stronghold of Donetsk.
Alexander Borodai, Prime
Minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, told a news
conference in Donetsk that the rebels had not removed any bodies from
the crash site, and that they are waiting for international experts to
act.
"There is even a house
where a body fell, the landlord asked us to remove and we haven't
because we are not allowed to move anything," he said.
An international organization at the scene Friday said it appeared that the bodies have not been tampered with.
Looting claim
Ukraine's government
also said it had received information of looting of various items,
including money and jewelry, and urged relatives to cancel the victims'
credit cards.
But a CNN crew at the
scene Saturday said it did not see any signs of looting or the rebels
rummaging through items at the crash site. Pro-Russian rebels have been
moving around the site since the plane crashed.
A government statement also accused the rebels of "seeking to export large-sized transport aircraft wreckage to Russia."
It appealed for the
international community to put pressure on Moscow to rein in the rebels,
saying, "Russia is supporting terrorists in their attempts to destroy
evidence of international crime."
Ukrainian officials also repeated their claim Saturday that Russia had been involved in the shooting down of the Boeing 777.
Vitaly Nayda,
counter-intellligence chief for Ukraine's Security Service
Counter-Intelligence Chief, told reporters in Kiev that a Russian-made
Buk M1 missile system had shot down MH17 and showed a photo of what he
claimed was the smoke trail of the missile fired.
Nayda claimed that three
Buk missile systems had crossed from Russia to Ukraine prior to the
downing of MH17, accompanied by Russian citizens who, he said, were the
ones operating the sophisticated weaponry. Nayda said that all three Buk
surface-to-air anti-aircraft missile systems have now left Ukrainian
territory.
Prime Minster Arseniy
Yatsenyuk, in an interview with CNN on Saturday, also suggested that
whoever operated the missile system had had expert training.
"This is not the
Russian-led drunk terrorist who pressed the button," he said. "This is
someone well trained. Someone who knows how this machine works. Someone
who has experience."
Ukraine and the
international community "will find out all responsible for this
international crime, and those who supported them, because this is (a)
crime against humanity, and the building of (the) international criminal
court is very big," Yatsenyuk added.
One key issue for investigators is the location of the plane's flight data recorders, which may hold crucial data.
The Ukraine government
said Friday that the black boxes for MH17 are still on the territory of
Ukraine, although they have not clarified whether they have control of
the boxes.
Russia's President
Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine's military campaign against the
separatists was to blame. He also has called for a "thorough and
objective investigation" of the crash.
Hostility, fresh clashes
German Chancellor Angela
Merkel asked Putin in a phone call Saturday to exert his influence on
the pro-Russia rebels to allow crash investigators free access to the
site, a German government spokesman said.
Putin and Merkel agreed
on the importance of a ceasefire between the pro-Russian separatists and
Ukraine's government, the spokesman said.
Bociurkiw
told reporters Saturday that the observers have seen that large pieces
of debris have not been disturbed, but much of it is badly burned, he
said.
At the same time, he
said, they have come across duty-free bags with bottles of liquor from
Schiphol Airport that are still intact.
When a larger, 21-strong
OSCE team arrived among the blackened debris on Friday, armed local
militiamen greeted them with hostility and limited their access to the
site, he said.
"There didn't seem to be anyone really in control," said Bociurkiw after that visit.
Bociurkiw said the group
only stayed about 75 minutes and examined about 200 meters at the scene
Friday before being forced to leave. Pieces of the airplane and bodies
are spread over several kilometers.
But, he added, "I don't
think too much of the crime scene has been compromised already. The
bodies are still there. They have not been tampered with. We actually
spoke to some civilian emergency workers. They said their job was just
to mark where the bodies are."
In an indication of the
volatility of the region, at least five Ukrainian soldiers were killed
and 20 wounded in the past 24 hours in clashes with pro-Russian
separatists only 100 kilometers from the debris fields, Lieutenant
Colonel Vladislav Seleznyov told CNN on Saturday.
Fighting is taking place
around the Luhansk airport and the Metalist neighborhood of Luhansk,
said Seleznyov, a Ukrainian military spokesman. The pro-Russian
separatists are firing with heavy artillery, mortars and Grad rockets,
he said.
'We need to retrieve the human remains'
Malaysian investigators also touched down in Kiev on Saturday to try to get the bottom of what happened to the jetliner.
But Malaysia's official
news agency Bernama said they were still negotiating with pro-Russian
rebels over access for their 131-member team.
Malaysian Transport
Minister Liow Tiong Lai insisted Saturday in Kuala Lumpur that Malaysia
must have full, safe access to the crash site, and that it is "deeply
concerned that the crash site has not yet been properly secured."
The site's integrity has
been compromised, Liow said, and "there are indications that vital
evidence has not been preserved in place."
He warned that
interference with the crash scene risked undermining the investigation
into what happened. Bodies are also not being treated with proper
respect.
The transportation
minister said he and other senior officials would also travel to Kiev to
support the Ukrainian authorities in their investigation.
"Since the plane went
down, the remains of 298 people lie uncovered. Citizens of 11 nations,
none of whom are involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, cannot be
laid to rest," he said.
"We need to retrieve the human remains as fast as we can."
An international tragedy
The full list of the passengers
was released Saturday. According to a final breakdown from Malaysia
Airlines, 193 of those killed were from the Netherlands, including one
who had dual U.S.-Dutch citizenship.
There were also 43
victims from Malaysia, including the plane's 15 crew; 27 from Australia;
12 from Indonesia; 10 from the United Kingdom, including one who had
dual UK-South African citizenship; four each from Germany and Belgium;
three from the Philippines and one each from Canada and New Zealand.
Eighty of the victims were children, the United Nations said.
In the Netherlands,
dozens of police officers are now visiting all the families of the
victims. They will gather specific information that will help identify
the victims, such as DNA samples, details of tattoos and dental records,
the Dutch police said. A Dutch forensics team has already arrived in
Ukraine.
The FBI is sending two
investigators to work on the case, a U.S. law enforcement official said,
but the Ukraine government will be in charge of the investigation.
Australia is sending six
foreign affairs officers to Kiev to assist in the investigation, the
country's Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday.
The Kremlin has
criticized Abbott over his harsh words on possible Russian involvement
in the tragedy. He repeated them Saturday.
"Australia takes a very
dim view of countries which facilitate killing of Australians, as you'd
expect us to. We take a very, very dim view of this and the idea that
Russia can wash its hands of responsibility, because this happened in
Ukrainian airspace, just does not stand serious scrutiny," Abbott said.
Obama's focus on Russia
Russia likely bears some of the responsibility for the apparent downing of Flight 17, U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday.
Obama said rebel
fighters couldn't have operated the surface-to-air missile believed
responsible for the shootdown "without sophisticated equipment and
sophisticated training, and that is coming from Russia."
He and other U.S.
officials stopped short of publicly placing the responsibility on
Russia, which has denied involvement in the destruction of the jetliner.
But a senior defense
official told CNN that the "working theory" among U.S. intelligence
analysts is that the Russian military supplied the Buk missile system to
rebel fighters inside Ukraine.
Among the evidence cited
by U.S. officials and others for their conclusions was an audio
recording released by Ukrainian intelligence officials that purportedly
featured pro-Russian rebels and Russian military officers discussing a
surface-to-air strike.
CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of this audio, or other similar recordings.
A day before MH17 came
down, Obama announced expanded sanctions against a number of major
Russian companies in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.
In an apparently
retaliatory move, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander
Lukashevich said Saturday that Russia had added the names of a number of
American citizens to a list that bans them from entering Russia.
Russia-Ukraine dispute
Tensions have been high
between Ukraine and Russia since street protests forced former
pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February. Russia
subsequently annexed Ukraine's southeastern Crimea region, and a
pro-Russian separatist rebellion has been raging in Ukraine's eastern
Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Ukraine has accused
Russia of allowing weapons and military equipment, including tanks, to
cross the border illegally into the hands of pro-Russian rebels.
