today a pro-russian separatist leader in ukraine held a news conference denying rebels shot don malaysian airliner mh17. saying pro-russian prebrebels ao blame and accusing them of destroying evidence at an international crime scene two days after the plane carrying 298 people went down. bodies are now being removed from the crash area near the ukrai ukraine/russian border. and viofficials visiting the si, and escorted by gunned men. gunfire could be heard nearby. and earlier cnn s ivan watson
what this is. these are criminals guarding their own crime scene. it s really outrageous, but before they move anything what you do in a good investigation is both the law enforcement and criminal investigators, since it s a crime scene, and the aviation investigators grid the whole crash site area. so they can put and piece together the evidence after the fact. and only then once they have gathered the forensics is anything moved, are bodies taken away, and they re certainly taken away in a more dignified manner. nobel not only is evidence of the crime being spirited away, not to mention the block boxes we really need to find, this is not how you process an accident scene or a crime scene. general marx, we have a report today from reuters that russian president vladimir putin and german chancellor angela merkel have met. that they have at least spoken and agreed that there is a need to urgently stop the hostilities
proper markers being put in place first? right. proper tests on the bodies as well, because the bodies themselves contain evidence. this particular type of missile would have put out pieces of metal that would have pierced the plane. it would have also been able to have telltale traces on the bodies as well, but when in an orderly investigation, and in an investigation done under both civil and criminal protocols, this would have been done quickly. they d have had the area gridded and mapped. remember, the ntsb has a go team that s imperative to get on that jet and go to the site immediately. so they would have already been removing bodies, but i think this development here says, because after all, there have been so many treaties and agreements broken. the flying nations sign treaties how things will be treated in the event of a disaster. and at least someone on the ground got the message that if they don t allow the ukrainians in, and others in to start
are seeing bodies being loaded into military vehicles. the ukrainian government is accusing pro-russian rebels removing at least three dozen bodies and destroying evidence. access to the crash site of flight 17, those who should have it, don t. at least not fully. instead, reports of looting, bodies being removed, evidence destroyed. our chris cuomo co-host of cnn s new day is at the one of the crash sites. chris, what is the latest there because of the debris being scattered, there are several crash sites, right? reporter: that s right, fred. i mean, it s hard to define it. i think that the perimeter has been set, again, by the unsophisticated people who are looking at it, something like 26 square kilometers which i guess mathematically makes some sense given it came down from 30,000 feet and that might be, you know, a reasonable range but that is also a huge amount of area to cover.
trees completely stripped, some 40, 50 feet up by big artillery shells. men hiding in these very shallow trenches. they ve obviously been anticipating and engaging in very heavy warfare. now you have a situation where there s no question that even in the worst of circumstances, christi and victor, you expect a certain level of dignity. it s not being met here. bodies are starting to be collected. some are still being missed. they re just being put in bags on the side of the road. these are not people they re local towns folk. not people who know how to do this. things like fuselage, so much for investigators. for them to look at and catalog and things have been disturbed here. things have been taken. the bodies are not getting the dignity they deserve. this is about, as troubled a set of circumstances as you can come upon here. the the ukrainian officials are air kuzing some of these pro-russian rebels of tampering with evidence, and the