At least 196 bodies from the Malaysian airliner that was shot down last week were transported to Donetsk for storage.

All 196 bodies recovered from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were yesterday, July 20, 2014, loaded onto refrigerated trains in Hrabove and transported to the rebel-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, agency reports said. Dozens of bodies however remain unaccounted for. Armed rebels operating in the area reportedly forced emergency workers to hand over the remains as efforts continued on the site for more body parts.

Nataliya Khuruzhaya, a duty officer at the train station in Torez, 9 miles from the crash site, said she saw emergency workers loading plane victims' bodies into five sealed, refrigerated train cars. She said the train was scheduled to go to Ilovaysk, closer to the Russian border. Russian news reports however said the bodies were being taken to Donetsk, a rebel-held stronghold.

A total of 298 people were on the MH17 when it was reportedly hit by a missile on July 17, 2014. All of them are thought to have died. Ukraine's government and the rebels have accused each other of shooting down the Boeing 777, which was flying from Amsterdam in The Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

The passenger list released by Malaysia Airlines shows that the plane was carrying 193 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians (including 15 crew members), 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians and 10 Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos, and one each from Canada and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, news agencies yesterday circulated a video of what appeared to be an in-flight recorder found by rescue workers in a field in eastern Ukraine from the Malaysia Airlines plane. The State Emergency Service said 380 people were still searching the remote area of  roughly 40 km from the Russian border.

They were being assisted by busloads of volunteers from local coal mines who fanned out across the wheat fields where the bodies and debris from the plane fell last Thursday. Malaysian investigators flew to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, over the weekend to assist in the operations. But Malaysia's official news agency Bernama, said yesterday that they were still negotiating with pro-Russian rebels over access for their 131-member team.