U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laid out what he called “overwhelming evidence” of Russian complicity in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as international horror deepened over the fate of the victims’ remains. Kerry demanded that Moscow take responsibility for actions of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine whom Washington suspects of downing the jet with a missile, and expressed disgust at their “grotesque” mishandling of the bodies. Television images of the rebel-held crash sites, where the remains of victims had lain decomposing in fields among their personal belongings, have turned initial shock and sorrow after Thursday’s disaster into anger. Emotions ran high in the Netherlands, the home country of about two thirds of the 298 people who died in the Boeing 777.
The Dutch foreign minister has said the nation is “furious” to hear bodies were being “dragged around.
In Washington, Kerry criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin and threatened “additional steps” against Moscow. “Drunken separatists have been piling bodies into trucks and removing them from the site,” “What’s happening is really grotesque and it is contrary to everything President Putin and Russia said they would do.” he told the media.
Meanwhile the British foreign secretary Philip Hammond joined the chorus of criticism, urging Moscow to ensure international investigators had access to the crash sites. “Russia risks becoming a pariah state if it does not behave properly,” he said.
