Malaysia Airlines MH17: Claims bodies and evidence removed from Ukraine crash site by Russian separatists.
Ukraine government has accused pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine of trying to destroy evidence at the crash site of MH17, saying rebels have taken 38 bodies from the site.
The Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down on Friday over eastern Ukraine, close to the border with Russia.
"The government of Ukraine officially states that the terrorists, with the help of Russia, are trying to destroy evidence of international crimes," the Ukraine government said in a statement.
"According to government data, the terrorists have taken 38 bodies to the morgue in Donetsk," it said, accusing specialists with "strong Russian accents" of threatening to carry out their own autopsies.
Separatist forces were also blocking access to the site for Ukrainian investigators and international observers, and searching for lorries to transport the wreckage to Russia, the statement claimed.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, head of Ukraine's security service, said talks between officials from Russia, Ukraine and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were continuing, in a bid set up a 20 square kilometre region as part of a "humanitarian mission" to move the bodies.
"We agreed on the 20 square kilometres, a concrete zone, and we hope the terrorists will allow us to work," Ukraine's UNIAN news agency quoted Mr Nalyvaichenko as saying.
However, Sergei Kavtaradze, a senior official of the pro-Russian rebels' self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said despite the discussions, no agreement had been reached.
"There is no security zone. It is in a region near the front. There is military activity there," Mr Kavtaradze said.
An AFP news crew at the scene of the crash said armed rebels were preventing journalists from accessing the site and shot in the air to warn them back.
Quite who controls what around the site is unclear. Rebel forces, who have declared a Donetsk People's Republic in the Russian-speaking east and want union with Moscow, have set up cordons and checkpoints around the area.
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