YEREVAN, JULY 23, ARMENPRESS. The first 20 victims recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 have started their journey back to the Netherlands from the crash site in eastern Ukraine, informs “Armenpress”. A sombre departure ceremony took place at Kharkiv Airport as 20 wooden coffins containing bodies were loaded onto a Dutch C130 Hercules military aircraft. It left the airbase for Eindhoven where it will be met by relatives, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and members of the Dutch royal family.

A faster Australian Boeing C17 took off two hours later carrying the bodies of 30 victims and is due to land in Eindhoven at the same time.

The jet's black box flight data recorders have been delivered to British experts from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch at Farnborough in Hampshire to download over the next 24 hours and examine.

A national day of mourning has been declared in the Netherlands for the 298 people killed, the majority of whom were Dutch, and will include a silent march in Amsterdam.

A minute's silence will be held before a motorcade takes the bodies to the Korporaal van Oudheusden military barracks in Hilversum, where the long process of identifying the remains, aided by a team of British police officers, begins. It could take weeks or even months.

The Boeing 777-200 took off from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport for Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia last Thursday when it was brought down near Grabovo, Donetsk, where Ukrainian forces have been battling separatists.

Five refrigerated wagons containing 200 bodies were released by rebels. It is thought more than 80 bodies have been left at the scene.