Floral tributes are building up outside the military base in the Netherlands where the formal identification of victims of the Malaysia Airlines crash is getting underway.

A further 74 coffins have left Ukraine bound for the Dutch city of Eindhoven, where the first 40 coffins arrived in military aircraft on Wednesday.

Authorities hope to finish the repatriation process by Friday.

Esther Naber, a spokeswoman for the Dutch police operation in Ukraine, said:
“Obviously we hope to bring back the remains of people’s loved ones home, wherever that home may be, to as many families as possible.

“But we don’t know,” she said. “Because the numbers of bags, the number of coffins even don’t correspond necessarily with how many people we will be able to identify. Because of the sad fact that we are also dealing with human remains and not all intact bodies”.

As investigators examine the black boxes from the Malaysian plane, Moscow has denied Ukrainian claims that it may have been behind the shooting down yesterday of two Ukrainian fighter jets.

Grief over the Malaysian crash has turned to anger over Russia’s support of the separatists suspected of being responsible.

The EU is reportedly considering its most serious sanctions yet against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, including the targeting of state-owned Russian banks.