London, July 22 (IANS): A train with the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 which crashed in Ukraine last week, arrived Tuesday in the city of Kharkiv, outside rebel territory.
According to officials, the remains will be flown from a coordination centre in Kharkiv to the Netherlands for identification and forensic identification, BBC reported.
The officials said that 282 bodies as well as recovered parts of 16 other bodies were loaded on to the refrigerated train.
On Monday, the rebels, including the self-proclaimed prime pinister of the Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Borodai, handed over the flight recorders of the ill-fated jetliner to Malaysian officials at a ceremony in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
The handover of the black boxes and the transfer of the remains of the bodies followed talks between Borodai and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Flight MH17, a Boeing 777, was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed after being hit by a missile in Ukraine near the Russian border last Thursday, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board. Of the 283 passengers on board, 193 were Dutch.
This is the second major tragedy for Malaysia Airlines this year after flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew on board went missing while going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing March 8. That flight remains untraced till date despite intense international efforts.