Ukraine Says Dutch Ready to Send Police to MH17 Site

The Netherlands and other countries that lost citizens in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 are proposing sending police officers to secure the crash site in rebel-held east Ukraine, authorities in Kiev have said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the offer was made by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte "to provide security at the crash scene and surrounding area in order to ensure an independent international investigation into the reasons for the catastrophe."

"Rutte noted that he intended, together with Australia and other countries whose citizens were victims on plane MH17, to propose sending a civilian police mission to Ukraine under the auspices of the U.N.," the Ukrainian presidency said in a statement following a phone talk between the two leaders late Tuesday.

The first batch of bodies from the downed jet were flown out from east Ukraine to the Netherlands Wednesday, after rebels controlling the crash site finally released them under intense international pressure.

But body parts of more victims remain strewn around the scene and leaders across the globe have expressed outrage over the alleged tampering with evidence at the unsecured site by insurgents accused of shooting down the plane.

International monitors said that the first group of overseas investigators to reach the scene Tuesday had found some of the debris from the jet moved and apparently cut apart.

Rebels have handed over the first black boxes from the downed jet to Malaysian experts, with the flight data recorders being sent to Britain to be decrypted.

Some 298 people from a dozen nations were killed when the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was apparently blown out of the sky Thursday over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile.