Rebel soldiers are seen near a big piece of debris at the MH17 crash site near Grabovo, some 100 km east from Donetsk, Ukraine, on Sunday.
Reuters/Washington
US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded on Sunday that Russia "step up" and take responsibility for the actions of allied separatists in Ukraine who are suspected of shooting down a Malaysian passenger plane last week.
Kerry said the US has seen major supplies moving into Ukraine from Russia in the last month, including a 150-vehicle convoy of armoured personnel carriers, tanks and rocket launchers transferred to the separatists several weeks ago.
"It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia," Kerry said in an interview on CNN.
Kerry said the US intercepted conversations about the transfer to separatists of the Russian SA-11 radar-guided SA11 missile system it blames for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on Thursday.
Moscow accuses the Ukrainian military in the shootdown that killed 298 people.
Kerry's remarks reflected Washington's growing anger with Russia over the crash.
In appearances on a string of Sunday news shows, Kerry called on Moscow to publicly seek responsible action from the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, including access to the crash site.
"The separatist are in control," Kerry said on NBC's Meet the Press programme. "And it is clear that Russia supports the separatists, supplies the separatists, encourages the separatists, trains the separatists, and Russia needs to step up and make a difference here."
Kerry, who spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a phone call on Saturday, expressed outrage over the chaotic scenes in the aftermath of the crash.
He said foreign investigators have been given only limited access to the crash site, 75 minutes on Friday and three hours on Saturday, despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised unfettered access.
"Drunken separatists have been piling bodies into trucks and removing them from the site," Kerry said on NBC. "What's happening is really grotesque and it is contrary to everything president Putin and Russia said they would do."
Indian plane ‘tried to contact MH17’
An Air India plane flying less than 25 kilometres from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 when it was downed had tried to make contact with the pilots, a newspaper said on Sunday.
The Times of India said Ukrainian air traffic controllers had asked the Air India pilots to try and establish contact with the Malaysia Airlines jet, which had stopped responding to its calls.
The Air India plane, which was flying from Delhi to Birmingham and was less than 25 kilometres from Malaysia MH17, received no response, according to the paper.
"The AI Dreamliner was less than 25km from the Malaysian aircraft when the latter was hit by a missile," an unidentified airline source told the newspaper.
"When the pilots learned of the cause of the crash later, they were stunned."
According to the newspaper, it is standard practice for air traffic controllers to ask pilots of aircraft in the vicinity to get in touch with pilots who have stopped responding.
The newspaper also said that minutes before the crash, the Air India pilots heard air traffic controllers give the Malaysian plane a "direct routing".
27 more bodies found at crash site
Twenty-seven more bodies were found on Sunday along with 20 fragments of bodies at the site where the Malaysian airliner crashed, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said.
He told a news conference that the bodies of 192 of the 298 people killed when the plane plunged into the steppe in eastern Ukraine on Thursday had been placed in refrigerated train wagons before being sent home for burial.