MH17 disaster: Ukraine’s train of despair

Platform one at Torez Station in eastern Ukraine. There are five grey carriages normally reserved for cargo that sat parked in the baking sun. This is the grimmest train on earth. It contains the 250 or more bodies of the victims of Flight MH17 crash recovered so far.

The corpses were brought here yesterday because the train was supposedly refrigerated. But as the three Dutch forensic experts who arrived here this morning opened one door after another, the stench that billowed out from the clusters of black bags inside was unbearable.

The forensic experts were wearing masks. Everyone else, including heavily armed Russia militia covered their noses with their hands. The engine was running and you could hear the refrigeration system whirring furiously to combat the scorching temperatures outside.

With grave determination and silence the Dutch experts performed a quick inspection of the body bags that seemed to be swelling up. We asked one what condition the corpses were in. He said: “The quality is not bad.”

At the end of the platform groups of children watched silently and Nuri, the train driver who spent 30 years doing his job, was chain-smoking as he hung his shaking hand out of the locomotive. I asked: “Where is the train is going? Where are you taking these bodies?”

He said: “No idea.”

The rebels guarding the train were armed to the teeth. One had a machine gun on a tripod alongside a slug of bullets around his shoulders. Tempers were frayed, and there were scenes of pushing and shoving.

At the same time at the centre of Donetsk, fighting had broken out at a residential centre near the railway station.

Four days after the shooting down of Flight MH17, some forensic work is finally underway, but the progress has been hampered by the nastiest politics, and now, it seems, by even more fighting.

To the relatives of those who lost their loved ones in the Malaysia air crash four days ago, the train parked on platform one at Torez station must be a train of utter despair.

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