The crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is still littered with the undiscovered bodies of men, women and children more than half a day after the crash.
Denjen Doroschenko, an Australian journalist working in Ukraine, said he had seen about 60 bodies, including several children, many of whom he had uncovered himself.
“You walk through the grass and you just find a child just lying there,” he told Fairfax Media in a radio interview from the scene.
“It’s just a horrible sight. You’ve got no idea how bad it is. It’s just a horrible sight to see.”
Doroschenko described the area as resembling a "charnel house", a vault for storing human skeletons.
There were as many as 80 children aboard the doomed Boeing 777, he was told by sources. Emergency services on the ground appeared to be ineffective and separatist organisations were “sort of in control”, Doroschenko said.
“They’re clueless about how to control a disaster area at all.
“You can just be walking through the field and you just find a body. And you call them over and they put a flag on it. A little flag on a stick.
“I found the nose of the aircraft melted into the ground. The fire has basically melted most of the fuselage away. It’s a terrible scene.”
Doroschenko reported that pro-Russian rebels had tried to prevent access to the crash site by blocking major roads. He and three other journalists travelled to the scene by car using back roads.
The site is being patrolled by rebel fighters with guns, he said.
“They shook my hand and said ‘we’re sorry’. I said, ‘mate ... [298] people died and that’s all you can say?
“They just looked at me blankly and then they walked away, carrying their guns and grenade launchers.”
