Ukraine accuses rebels of looting crash site; observers return to scene

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Ukraine accused rebels of looting jewelry, credit cards and money Saturday from the crash site of a passenger jet that went down in the nation's east.

The United States said a surface-to-air missile, possibly fired by pro-Russian rebels, took down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Thursday.

The plane, which had 298 people aboard, was traveling from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

The government in Kiev said it received information of looting of various items, including money and jewelry, and urged relatives to cancel the victims' credit cards.

But a CNN crew at the scene Saturday said it did not see any signs of looting or the rebels rummaging through items at the crash site. Pro-Russian rebels have been lurking around the site since the plane crashed.

An international organization at the scene Friday said it appears that the bodies have not been tampered with.

However, Ukrainian government officials claimed Saturday that "terrorists," as they routinely refer to the rebels, had taken 38 bodies from the scene to a morgue in Donetsk city, a rebel stronghold.

The government statement also accused the rebels of "seeking to export large-sized transport aircraft wreckage to Russia."

It appealed for the international community to put pressure on Moscow to rein in the rebels, saying, "Russia is supporting terrorists in their attempts to destroy evidence of international crime."

As Ukraine's government pointed fingers at the rebels, investigators worked to get access to the site.

Body parts gathered in bags

A team of international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported hearing gunfire and explosions from the vicinity of the crash site Saturday.

OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said that experts now have professional body bags and are gathering body parts in them to be collected by road.

He said the OSCE team was still being denied access to certain areas but that it had been given more freedom of movement than on Friday.

The observers have seen that large pieces of debris have not been disturbed, but much of it is badly burned, he said. At the same time, he said, they have come across duty-free bags of liquor from Schiphol Airport that are still intact.

When a larger, 21-strong OSCE team arrived among the rubble on Friday, armed local militiamen greeted them with hostility and limited their access to the site.

"There didn't seem to be anyone really in control," said Bociurkiw after that visit.

Armed men, apparently pro-Russia militants, loosely guarded the area but couldn't answer the monitors' questions, he said.

Bociurkiw said the group only stayed about 75 minutes and examined about 200 meters at the scene Friday before being forced to leave. Pieces of the airplane and bodies are spread over several kilometers.

Many of the victims were on vacation

'We need to retrieve the human remains'

Malaysian investigators touched down in Kiev on Saturday to try to get the bottom of what happened to the jetliner.

But it's uncertain whether they will make it to the crash site in rebel-held eastern Ukraine, Malaysia's official news agency Bernama reported. They were still negotiating with pro-Russian rebels over access for their 131-member team.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai insisted Saturday in Kuala Lumpur that Malaysia must have full, safe access to the crash site, and that it is "deeply concerned that the crash site has not yet been properly secured."

The site's integrity has been compromised, Liow said, and "there are indications that vital evidence has not been preserved in place."

He warned that interference with the crash scene risked undermining the investigation into what happened. Bodies are also not being treated with proper respect.

The transportation minister said he and other senior officials would also travel to Kiev to support the Ukrainian authorities in their investigation.

"Since the plane went down, the remains of 298 people lie uncovered. Citizens of 11 nations, none of whom are involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, cannot be laid to rest," he said.

"We need to retrieve the human remains as fast as we can."

The full list of the passengers will be released Saturday, he said.

At least 189 of those killed were from the Netherlands and 44 from Malaysia, including the plane's 15 crew. Others came from countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium.

Eighty of the victims were children, the United Nations said.

In the Netherlands, dozens of police officers are now visiting all the families of the victims. They will gather specific information that will help identify the victims, such as DNA samples, details of tattoos and dental records, the Dutch police said.

U.S. worries

Lack of access to the crash site worries U.S. officials, including Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who tweeted: "Monitors should be able to access the crash site of MH17. US is deeply concerned by reports that separatists are denying access."

Bociurkiw said the investigation will be difficult because the plane crashed in a hard-to-access area in the countryside with no electricity.

"I don't think too much of the crime scene has been compromised already," Bociurkiw said. "The bodies are still there. They have not been tampered with. We actually spoke to some civilian emergency workers. They said their job was just to mark where the bodies are."

The FBI is sending two investigators to work on the case, a U.S. law enforcement official said, but the Ukraine government will be in charge of the investigation.

Six specialist investigators are also on their way to Kiev from the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch, the UK Foreign Office said. A Dutch forensics team has already arrived in Ukraine.

Australia's anger at Russia

Australia is sending six foreign affairs officers to Kiev to assist in the investigation and plans to deploy an emergency response team, the country's Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday.

The country lost at least 27 of its citizens in the crash.

The Kremlin has criticized Abbott over his harsh words on possible Russian involvement in the tragedy. He repeated them Saturday.

"Australia takes a very dim view of countries which facilitate killing of Australians, as you'd expect us to. We take a very, very dim view of this and the idea that Russia can wash its hands of responsibility, because this happened in Ukrainian airspace, just does not stand serious scrutiny," Abbott said.

Both he and Obama focused on the importance of finding MH17's flight recorders.

Their location has not been determined. Initially, Ukrainian officials said they were in rebel hands or had been taken to Russia, but later said they were on Ukrainian soil.

Prime Minster Arseniy Yatsenyuk told CNN Saturday that the Ukrainian government is not in possession of the black boxes.

Obama's focus on Russia

Russia likely bears some of the responsibility for the apparent downing of Flight 17, U.S. President Barack Obama said.

In the administration's strongest words yet on the downing of the jet, Obama said rebel fighters couldn't have operated the surface-to-air missile believed responsible for the shootdown "without sophisticated equipment and sophisticated training, and that is coming from Russia."

He and other U.S. officials stopped short of publicly placing the responsibility on Russia, which has denied involvement in the destruction of the jetliner.

But a senior defense official told CNN that the "working theory" among U.S. intelligence analysts is that the Russian military supplied the Buk missile system to rebel fighters inside Ukraine.

The United States believes pro-Russian separatists could not have operated it without Russian training.

Incriminating recording

Among the evidence cited by U.S. officials and others for their conclusions was an audio recording released by Ukrainian intelligence officials that purportedly featured pro-Russian rebels and Russian military officers discussing a surface-to-air strike.

"How are things going there," a man identified as a Russian intelligence agent asks.

"Well, we are 100% sure that it was a civilian plane," a man identified as a pro-Russian fighter responds.

"Are there a lot of people?" the Russian officer asks.

The rebel fighter then utters an obscenity and says, "The debris was falling straight into the yards."

CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of this audio, or other similar recordings.

Ukraine's Interfax news agency reported claims by an adviser to Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Geraschenko that the launcher was handed over to Russian agents across the border at a checkpoint in the Luhansk area overnight.

A senior Ukrainian official who spoke to CNN also accused Russia of carrying out a cover-up of its role in the shoot-down.

He cited video showing a Buk launcher being moved toward Russia overnight.

CNN could not independently confirm the claims.

Russia-Ukraine dispute

Tensions have been high between Ukraine and Russia since street protests forced former pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February. Russia subsequently annexed Ukraine's southeastern Crimea region, and a pro-Russian separatist rebellion has been raging in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Ukraine has accused Russia of allowing weapons and military equipment, including tanks, to cross the border illegally into the hands of pro-Russian rebels.