THE HAGUE: The first bodies from the MH17 crash in Ukraine will be flown on Wednesday to the Netherlands, where their identification could take months, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.
“Tomorrow, the first plane (with bodies) will leave for Eindhoven," in the southern Netherlands, Rutte told journalists on Tuesday after the bodies arrived in Ukraine's Kharkiv from rebel-held territory.
"Preparations will be made in Kharkiv so that identification can be done in the Netherlands as soon as possible," Rutte said.
"As soon as a victim is identified, first and foremost, the family will be informed and no one else. That can take weeks or months," he added.
Rutte confirmed that all the bodies would be brought to the Netherlands and then flown to their respective countries.
Upon arrival at Eindhoven, the bodies will be taken to the Kaporaal van Oudheusden military barracks in Hilversum, around 100km away.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it went down in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border on Thursday night.
The Boeing 777-200 aircraft was carrying 298 people - 283 passengers and 15 crew.
Flight MH17, allegedly brought down by a missile fired by pro-Russia rebels, had 193 Dutch passengers.
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