Three Dutch forensic experts have arrived in Donetsk, in Ukraine and will travel later today to Torez to inspect the refrigerated trains where bodies from Malaysia Airways flight MH17 are being stored.

A second refrigerated train has arrived in Torez, broadcaster Nos says on Monday. One train holds the bodies of almost 200 people and so far 251 bodies have been recovered, Nos quotes officials as saying.

‘Agreements have been made between the OSCE and the leader of the separatists but you never know what that actually means,’ journalist David-Jan Godfroid told Nos radio.

The Dutch have made it clear their priority is bringing their dead home. Most of those killed when the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was brought down were Dutch.

Emotional pleas

A number of relatives of Dutch victims have made emotional pleas to Russian president Putin to ensure the bodies of their loved ones are brought back to the Netherlands.

Tosca Mastenbroek, who lost her sister and her family in the crash, went to her sister’s home and said she had even looked under their bed, to see if they had hidden there.

‘The house was empty. I found an email with their travel details. And then to feel that emptiness, and the souls of the people who we were so close to,’ she told Nos radio.

The father of 17-year-old Elsemiek de Borst, who died along with her mother in the crash, wrote an open letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin and others.

‘Dear Mr Putin, separatist leaders or Ukrainian government, thank you for murdering my wonderful and only daughter,’ he wrote.