Victims Of The MH17 Crash Begins Their Journey Home

Today is a day of mourning in the Netherlands for the 298 victims of MH17 that was shot down. As the first planes carrying bodies from flight MH17 have left Ukraine for the Netherlands.  

Pro-Russian rebels have been widely accused of shooting down the Malaysia Airlines plane on 17 of July. The Rebels have also been accused of exaggerating the number of bodies transported from the crash site to the town of Kharkiv on Tuesday. They had claimed 282 bodies had been loaded on to a train, but experts said only 200 could be verified.

Experts will begin to identify the dead, most of whom were Dutch. The first 40 coffins were slowly loaded on to two military planes at Kharkiv airport on Wednesday morning by a military guard of honour.

Ambassadors, officials and soldiers gathered to see off the planes. Australian government envoy Angus Houston said the ceremony was intended to give the victims the "respect and dignity they deserve" after a "tragedy of unspeakable proportions". 

Dutch government representative Hans Docter said the victims had begun their "long journey" home.

The first flight is due to arrive in Eindhoven at 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT) and will be met by members of the Dutch royal family and Prime Minister Mark Rutte. 

Churches around the Netherlands will ring their bells for five minutes before the planes land.

The bodies are then due to be taken to the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks south of Hilversum for identification. Mr Rutte said that process could take months.

In a separate process, the "black box" flight-data recorders from MH17 have arrived in the UK, where they will be examined at the headquarters of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough.

Culled from BBC News