MH17 Human Remains Begin First Stage Of Journey Home To Grieving Families

More human remains from MH17, the airliner downed over Ukraine last month, have reached the city of Kharkiv where forensic teams will prepare them to be flown home and reclaimed by victims' families.

Amid fighting in the east, experts have been struggling to recover body parts from all 298 people on the Malaysia Airlines plane, mostly Dutch nationals. Shelling near the crash site forced a partial halt in operations on Saturday.

“It is, of course, as you will understand, a difficult process with more than 100 individuals on the field and over 20 cars,” said Alexander Hug, Deputy Head of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission to Ukraine.

“But that has been talked through and we have a specific procedure in place should there be an immediate danger to the site, then we leave.”

Pro-Russian rebels deny shooting down the plane on July 17.

Ukraine’s military says it is tightening the noose around the Donetsk and Luhansk rebel strongholds.

Meanwhile, amid European Union and US sanctions on Moscow, Russia has accused the EU of double standards, saying it has lifted restrictions on supplying Ukraine with military technology and equipment “on the quiet”.