Dutch day of mourning

The Netherlands, on its first national day of mourning in more than 50 years, yesterday witnessed the arrival of 40 coffins with the remains of some of those who perished in Ukraine on flight MH17 a week ago.

King Willem Alexander, Queen Maxima and Prime Minister Mark Rutte gathered with about 1000 relatives of the 193 Dutch victims of the crash, and foreign officials, at Eindhoven airport, where two military planes landed shortly before 4pm.

After the landing, a soldier played The Last Post and a minute of silence was observed.

The coffins were moved one by one to waiting hearses. Spectators watched in silence.

The bodies were to be transported to a military base in Hilversum for identification, a process that might take months, Rutte said at a press conference yesterday. The Dutch are leading the investigation into what happened to the flight, which departed from Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur and was shot down in Ukraine.

Forensic work is accelerating as international pressure builds on Russian President Vladimir Putin to expedite a probe into who shot down the Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 298 passengers and crew. Russia has denied supplying rebels with the weapon suspected of downing the plane, but US intelligence officials say satellite images suggest that a surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory in Ukraine was responsible.

• Two Ukrainian fighter jets were

shot down yesterday in the area where flight MH17 came down. The Ukrainian military said the jets were hit by missiles fired from Russian soil.

"According to preliminary information, the rockets were launched from Russian territory," Kiev's National Security and Defence Council said.

The planes came down about 45km southeast of the MH17 crash site, towards the Russian border, as they were providing air support for government infantry. Both pilots parachuted to safety.

The Su-25 jets were flying at an altitude of 5200m.

Pro-Russian rebels have insisted on several occasions that they are not equipped with weapons capable of hitting targets above 2500m.

But a spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic told AFP its fighters had shot down the two jets.