MH17: Makeshift train morgue now the grisly focus of international tug of war

Much of the shambolic rescue effort seems to be simply the result of woefully under-resourced emergency services stretched thin by the chaos of war. Photo / AP

When Roman showed up for work as usual at the railway station in Torez at 7am on Sunday local time, he was told to couple his diesel locomotive to a five-wagon train in the siding and shunt it to the platform outside the white-painted ticket office.

No one told him what was in the four windowless grey wagons, or where he would be going next.

But these four refrigerator wagons and one guard's van are now the grisly focus of an international tug of war.

Roman's train is the makeshift morgue housing nearly 200 bodies collected from the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

Many of these bodies had lain in the open for two days before they were collected from wheat fields, sunflower plantations and roadsides by a small army of emergency workers, helped by local miners.

The bodies were wrapped in black plastic and watched over by gunmen of the rebel Donetsk People's Republic.

About 100 body bags had been laid next to the country road above the main crash site. They were then loaded on to flatbed trucks driven by rebel militiamen and driven into the night.

Even the drivers said they did not know where they were being taken, and it was only after a night of uncertainty that the rebel leadership revealed the presence of the train.

But uncertainty still remains.

Rebel officials say 196 bodies are on the train. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's observer mission, which visited the makeshift morgue, says that's "unconfirmed".

That number leaves 102 bodies unaccounted for - perhaps unnoticed somewhere in the vast 25km-wide quadrant of fields where they fell, perhaps simply burned up in the blast that brought the Boeing 777 down. There were reports 40 more bodies were taken to the station yesterday.

AP reported last night that local rescue workers had piled 21 black body bags by the side of the road in Grabovo, 15km away. It was unclear how quickly they would be transported to Torez, where the other bodies remained. A train engineer told AP the refrigeration had been off yesterday but it was not immediately clear why. The cooling system was back up and running last night.

The dead have now become objects of an international squabbling match. The Ukrainian Government accused the rebels of spiriting away dozens of bodies and obstructing access to the inspection site. John Kerry, the United States Secretary of State, called the rebels' treatment of the dead "grotesque" yesterday, and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of failing to live up to promises to ensure access for international observers. Alexander Borodai, the Prime Minister of the self-declared People's Republic of Donetsk, defended the rebels' handling of the casualties, saying leaving the bodies unattended for any longer would have been "inhumane".

For many, the dead have already suffered too many indignities.

While partly malicious, much of the shambles seems simply the result of a woefully under-resourced rescue service stretched thin by war. Torez is an economically depressed mining town of 88,000 and its small units of emergency workers do not have the facilities to deal with such a disaster. Lacking the most basic lifting equipment, they dug through charred wreckage by hand yesterday.

Borodai says the train will not be moved until international inspectors, including teams from countries that lost nationals, arrive. Rumours abound that the train could be sent to Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city 280km to the northwest. But Borodai has also spoken about sending the bodies east into Russia, where he says he "trusts" the authorities to take care of them.

- additional reporting AP

Access denied: how the political situation in Ukraine has hampered efforts to unlock the truth

The normal procedure
Under the Convention on International Civil Aviation, jurisdiction over airline crash investigations resides with the country where wreckage lands. Most United Nations member states, including Russia and Ukraine, are signatories to the convention. MH17 crashed in Ukraine, meaning Ukraine has immediate jurisdiction.

The problems
MH17 fell in eastern Ukraine, in a region controlled by pro-Russian separatist militias. Western governments have expressed concern that pro-Russian forces might tamper with the crash site in a bid to cover up responsibility. The nature of the investigation may also depend on whether the crash was an accident or, as evidence suggests, a deliberate attack.

The monitors
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe monitors, who are not forensic experts, were denied full unfettered access to the debris field by the rebels who control the area. Members of Ukraine's Emergency Situations Service also reached the scene, but rebels were complicating their recovery efforts. Malaysian, Australian, Dutch, American and British air accident investigators have been converging on Kiev.

- AAP