07/22/2014, 00.00
UKRAINE - RUSSIA
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Downed plane: bodies moved in Ukraine, the black boxes delivered to Malaysians

Parties continue to trade accusations. Moscow now blames a Ukrainian fighter that flew on the same path as the civilian plane. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the remains of 282 victims will be processed, whilst another 16 are still officially missing.

Kyiv (AsiaNews/Agencies) - The train with the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down on 17 July, arrived in the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv. Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists say they found the plane's black boxes" (pictured).

As authorities wait to process the 282 bodies, 16 people are still missing as of Monday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said. At the same time, 87 "body fragments" have been recovered from the sprawling crash site, but it is unclear to whom they may have belonged.

The victims' bodies are expected to be moved to the Netherlands. For Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, bringing the victims' remains home is his country's top priority.

Speaking to the UN Security Council on Monday, he said, "human remains should be used in a political game." The reference is to the exchange of accusations over the aircraft's downing.

The Americans and the British, as well as Ukrainians, claim that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched within the territory under rebel control and back their claims with audio recording of suspected insurgents pro-Russian speaking shooting down of a plane.

Pro-Russian rebels have repeatedly denied responsibility for the attack. Instead, the Russians now claim that a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet flew along the same route and within 3 kilometres to 5 kilometres of Flight 17, Russian General Andrei Kartapolov said.

"We would like to know why the Ukrainian plane was flying along a civilian route on the same flight path as the Malaysian Boeing," Kartapolov said, according to the reports.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, when asked about audio recordings purporting to show pro-Russian separatists talking about shooting down a plane, he suggested that if they did, it was an accident.

"If they think they shot down a military jet, it was confusion. If it was confusion, it was not an act of terrorism."

The black boxes should shed some light on what happened to the downed plane. Pro-Russian rebels acknowledge finding them, and plan to hand them over to Malaysian authorities.

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