Remains of MH17 victims reach Ukrainian city

Police secure a refrigerated train bearing bodies of passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 as it reaches Kharkiv on Tuesday. The train arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city on their way to the Netherlands, a journey which has been agonizingly slow for relatives of the victims. [Photo/IC]

A train carrying the remains of some of the 298 victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 arrived in a Ukrainian government-held city on Tuesday on the first leg of their final journey home to be reclaimed by their families.

Five refrigerated wagons containing 200 body bags reached the city of Kharkiv after pro-Russian separatists agreed to hand over the plane's black boxes to Malaysian authorities and the bodies to the Netherlands, where the majority of victims had lived.

The train slowly rolled into the grounds of an arms industry plant, where the remains were to be unloaded and flown to the Netherlands for the lengthy process of identification. A spokeswoman for a Dutch team of forensic experts in Kharkiv said departure was not expected before Wednesday.

A representative of the OSCE European security watchdog said there were still human remains left where the Boeing 777 hit the ground in eastern Ukraine last Thursday. "We did not observe any recovery activity in place," spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said after his group inspected the site earlier in the day.

The jet was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down near Donetsk, a stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, where fighting with Ukrainian troops flared again on Tuesday.

Bodies, black boxes handed over from Ukraine crash site	First bodies of MH17 victims to arrive in Netherlands on Wednesday