MH17 Crash: Rebels hand over black boxes

By Steven Hogg - 22 Jul '14 08:09AM

The pro-Russian separatists, early on Tuesday, handed over plane's black boxes along with some remains of the passengers that they had retrieved from the crash site of the Malaysian airplane MH17 in eastern Ukraine.

Senior separatist leader Aleksander Borodai handed over the black boxes in Donetsk. To journalists, gathered at the headquarters of his self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, he said: "Here they are, the black boxes," Reuters reports.

Colonel Mohamed Sakri of the Malaysian National Security Council said that the two black boxes were "in good condition".

The rebels handed over the black boxes hours after the United Nations Security Council decided unanimously that immediate international access to the crash site was necessary, BBC reports.

The black boxes, experts say, will reveal the exact time when the plane was shot down as well as the altitude and position of MH17. If it contains cockpit voice recordings too, then clues could be derived as to what caused the crash.

At a news conference Monday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that a train carrying around 200 body bags was on its way to Donetsk, which will later go to Kharkiv - which is in Ukrainian government hands. From there the bodies would be taken back to the Netherlands to be identified. Most of the victims belonged to Netherlands.

The Malaysian Airlines passenger jet, which was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed last Thursday killing all 298 people onboard.

Blame-game is on between Ukraine and Russia; both hold the other responsible for the crash. Ukraine says that Russia supplied the rebels with the surface-to-air missile with which the aircraft was shot down, while Russia said that the incident would not have happened if Ukraine hadn't renewed military campaign against the separatists.