By Peter Leonard and Evgeniy Maloletka
oped: Ok Vlad [Macho Man] Putin...just admit already your people F'd up...return the evidence and take your lumps like a real Man!
HRABOVE, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of helping separatist rebels destroy evidence at the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines plane shot down in rebel-held territory — a charge the rebels denied.
As dozens of victims' bodies lay
in bags by the side of the road baking in the summer heat,
international monitors at the crash site Saturday said they were still
being hampered by heavily armed rebels.
"Some
of the body bags are open and the damage to the corpses is very, very
bad. It is very difficult to look at," OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw
told reporters in a phone call from the site, where the smell of
decaying bodies was unmistakable.
He
said the 24-member delegation was given further access Saturday to the
crash site but their movements were being limited by the rebels. The
site sprawls eight square miles (20 square kilometers) across sunflower
and wheat fields between two villages in eastern Ukraine.
"We
have to be very careful with our movements because of all the
security," Bociurkiw said. "We are unarmed civilians, so we are not in a
position to argue with people with heavy arms."
Flight 17 from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur was carrying 298 people from 13 nations when it was shot
down Thursday in eastern Ukraine close to the Russian border, an area
that has seen months of clashes between government troops and pro-Russia
separatists.
At an
emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. pointed blame
at the separatists, saying Washington believes the jetliner likely was
downed by an SA-11 missile and "we cannot rule out technical assistance
from Russian personnel."
The
government in Kiev said militiamen have removed 38 bodies from the
crash site and have taken them to the rebel-held city of Donetsk. It
said the bodies were transported with the assistance of specialists with
distinct Russian accents.
The rebels are also "seeking large transports to carry away plane fragments to Russia," the Ukrainian government said Saturday.
In Donetsk, separatist leader
Alexander Borodai denied that any bodies had been transferred or that
the rebels had in any way interfered with the work of observers. He said
he encouraged the involvement of the international community in
assisting with the cleanup before the conditions of the bodies worsens
significantly.
As emergency
workers put some 80 bodies into bags Saturday, Bociurkiw stressed that
his team was not at the site to conduct a full-scale investigation.
"We
are looking at security on the perimeter of the crash site, looking at
the status in the condition of the bodies, the status in the condition
of the debris, and also personal belongings," he said.
Ukraine
also called on Moscow to insist that the pro-Russia rebels grant
international experts the ability to conduct a thorough, impartial
investigation into the downing of the plane — echoing a demand that
President Barack Obama issued a day earlier from Washington.
"The integrity of the site has
been compromised, and there are indications that vital evidence has not
been preserved in place," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai
said at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
He called for immediate access for Malaysia's team at the site to retrieve human remains.
Ukraine
says it has passed along all information on developments relating to
Thursday's downing to its European and U.S. partners.
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in
a phone call Saturday that an independent, international commission led
by the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, should be
granted swift access to the crash site, said government spokesman Georg
Streiter.
The commission
should examine the circumstances of the crash and recover the victims,
said Streiter, adding that Merkel urged Putin to use his influence over
the separatists to make that happen.
In the Netherlands, forensic
teams fanned out across the country Saturday to collect material
including DNA samples that will help positively identify the remains of
the 192 Dutch victims.
Police
said in a tweet that 40 pairs of detectives from the National Forensic
Investigations Team would be visiting victims' relatives over the coming
days.
The location of the
black boxes remains a mystery and the separatist leadership remained
adamant Saturday that it had not located them. Bociurkiw also said he
had received no information on their whereabouts.
Aviation
experts say, however, not to expect too much from the flight data and
cockpit voice recorders in understanding how Flight 17 was brought down.
The
most useful evidence that's likely to come from the crash scene is
whether missile pieces can be found in the trail of debris that came
down as the plane exploded, said John Goglia, a U.S. aviation safety
expert and former National Transportation Safety Board member.
Obama called the downing of the plane "a global tragedy."
"An
Asian airliner was destroyed in European skies filled with citizens
from many countries, so there has to be a credible international
investigation into what happened," he said.
Both
the White House and the Kremlin have called for peace talks in the
conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-speaking
separatists who seek closer ties to Moscow. Heavy fighting took place
Friday around Luhansk, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the
crash site, with 20 civilians reported killed.
Malaysia
Airlines, meanwhile, said Saturday it has no immediate plans to fly the
relatives of the 298 passengers and crew killed to visit the crash site
in Ukraine because of security concerns.
A
spokesman for the airline says next of kin are being cared for in
Amsterdam while a team from the carrier, including security officials,
was in Ukraine assessing the situation.
In the Netherlands, travelers
flying out of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport laid flowers and signed a
condolence book before boarding their flights Saturday, including those
on the latest Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to Kuala Lumpur.
___
David
McHugh in Kiev, Ukraine; Mstyslav Chernov in Donetsk, Ukraine; Michael
Corder in Amsterdam and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this
report.
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