Pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine were planning to carry large fragments of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to Russia on Saturday, the Kiev government charged.
“The government of Ukraine officially states that the terrorists, with the help of Russia, are trying to destroy evidence of international crimes,” the Ukraine government said in a statement.
Also Saturday, the rebels — with Russian-speaking escorts in tow — began to move dozens of corpses from the crash site to a morgue in the rebel-controlled Donetsk region.
“According to government data, the terrorists have taken 38 bodies to the morgue in Donetsk,” the government said, accusing specialists with “strong Russian accents” at the scene of threatening to carry out their own autopsies.
“The terrorists are seeking heavy trucks to carry the plane wreckage to Russia.”
Meanwhile, the pro-Russia rebels who control the debris field continued to limit the access of international investigators Saturday after spending more than 48 hours sifting through the wreckage themselves. Vital evidence, including Flight 17’s black boxes, remained unaccounted for as Malaysian officials warned of rampant looting at the scene.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, warned victims’ families to cancel their loved ones’ credit cards.
“I have received information that terrorist death-hunters were collecting not only cash and jewelry of the crashed Boeing’s dead passengers, but also the credit cards of the victims,” the key adviser said.
Photojournalist Keiko Zoll wrote on Facebook: “There isn’t a single cellphone, wallet with money or camera to be found in any handbag or on the bodies.”
Witnesses described how what should be a somber site of precision forensics is instead a chaotic scene of rotting corpses and picked-through luggage and plane parts.
“Some of the body bags are open, and the damage to the corpses is very, very bad,” said Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the 24-member European delegation that has tried for two days to examine the debris field.
“It is very difficult to look at,” he added.
Contingent leaders were told they were being blocked from the site for their own safety.
Additional investigators will be at the scene Sunday, including forensic experts from the Netherlands and a 62-person Malaysian disaster-response team.
The publication quoted a rebel leader on the site as insisting that international investigators would not be allowed full access to the debris field until the rebels’ own police investigators were finished there.
Some 190 corpses and body parts had been bagged and transported by the rebel-led effort, the publication said. But due to a lack of generators, work would stop overnight Saturday.