Wednesday 23 July 2014 16.37 The bodies of the first victims from a Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine last week arrived back in the Netherlands amid dignified grief tinged with anger.
Bells pealed and flags flew at half mast in memory of the 298 people, in the first national day of mourning since wartime Queen Wilhelmina died in 1962.
King Willem-Alexander and Prime Minister Mark Rutte led dignitaries on the tarmac as two military aircraft carrying 40 plain wooden coffins landed at Eindhoven Airport after a solemn departure ceremony in Kharkiv, Ukraine this morning.
A military honour guard stood to attention as a lone trumpeter played The Last Post, the military funeral call for people killed in war.
After a minute's silence - observed in stations, factories, offices and streets across a stunned nation - soldiers and marines boarded the Dutch Hercules C-130 and Australian Boeing C-17 to carry the coffins to 40 waiting hearses lined up on the runway.
Relatives of some of the victims were present at the airport but were shielded from the media glare, officials said.
The bodies are being be transported to the city of Hilversum for identification.
Mr Rutte has said the process of identification could take months.
Flags on public buildings across the Netherlands are flying at half staff.
Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said almost every family in the country of 15 million knew someone who died or their relatives, contributing to a national mood of shock and grief.
The delay in repatriating the bodies has caused widespread anger in the Netherlands.
This was compounded last night when Dutch forensics expert Jan Tuinder said 200 bodies had been located, rather than a figure of 280 claimed by rebels.
He said his investigators would return to the crash scene and not leave until all of the remains had been recovered.
In Pictures - MH17 Repatriation
Windmills around the Netherlands were set in a mourning position and church bells tolled just before the first military transport planes carrying the remains arrived from Kharkiv.
Trains came to a stop for a minute at 4pm local time as the country observed a minute's silence, Dutch Railways said.
No planes took off or landed at Schiphol Airport, from which the Malaysian Airlines flight departed, for 13 minutes around the time the bodies landed.
A silent memorial rally was planned outside the royal palace in Amsterdam's Dam square this evening.
Abbott calls for 'full recovery search' of crash site
Meanwhile, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said it is possible that many bodies from the crash are still lying in the open in Ukraine.
"It's quite possible that many bodies are still out there, in the open in the European summer, subject to interference, and subject to the ravages of heat and animals," Mr Abbott said.
He called for a "full recovery search" of the crash site, saying such an operation was "necessary if all of the bodies are to be recovered".
The Australian leader added that he had "serious concerns" about the recovery of the victims' bodies.
A representative of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said there are still human remains left where the Boeing 777 hit the ground in eastern Ukraine.
"We did not observe any recovery activity in place," spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said after his group inspected the site yesterday.
Black boxes arrive in UK
The black box flight recorders from the crashed plane have arrived in the UK, the Ukrainian government's special investigation commission has said.
US intelligence officials have said evidence gathered so far suggests pro-Russian separatists launched the SA-11 surface-to-air missile that blew up the airliner.
Western governments have threatened Russia with broader sanctions for what they say is its backing of the militia.
However, they are struggling to agree a response, and European Union ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday delayed action for a few days.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would urge the separatists to allow a full investigation, which the Netherlands said it would lead.
Malaysia had said it would send the black boxes to a British lab for analysis.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, speaking to parliament in Kuala Lumpur today, maintained his stand that blame should not be apportioned pending an investigation.
"A few hours after MH17 crashed, officials in the US and Ukraine claimed it was shot down," Mr Najib said.
"If that is true, we criticise the party believed to be responsible.
"However, we are not pointing fingers at anyone at this stage, until evidence has really been obtained."
Mr Najib's cautious approach enabled him to work through intermediaries to reach rebel leaders and broker a deal to retrieve the black boxes and secure the release of the bodies.
A small group of Malaysian air crash experts became the first international accident investigators to reach the site yesterday, escorted by a convoy of international monitors and heavily armed separatist fighters.
As they went about their work, loud explosions were heard on the outskirts of Donetsk, some 60km from the site.
The shooting down of the airliner has sharply deepened the Ukrainian crisis, in which separatist gunmen in the Russian-speaking east have been fighting government forces since pro-Western protesters in Kiev forced out a pro-Moscow president and Russia annexed Crimea in March.
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