A refrigerated train carrying the bodies of victims from the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash has left rebel-held territory and arrived in the city of Kharkiv.

Ukrainian authorities have set that they plan to fly the bodies to the Netherlands on Thursday, where investigators can examine and help identify the remains.

However, no investigators have yet been permitted to visit the crash site to determine the cause of the crash, and fighting rages on between the rebels and Ukrainian forces in the area.

On Monday, the “black box” of flight recorders was handed over by the pro-Russian separatists that control the area to Malaysian authorities at an official ceremony in Donetsk.

The West has blamed the rebels for accidentally shooting the Boeing 777 aircraft out of the sky with a Russian-supplied MA-11 BUK “Gadfly” anti-aircraft missile system, and the Dutch have opened an investigation whether the action would constitute a war crime.

Russia has not denied the theory that the rebels shot down the plane believing it to be a Ukrainian military cargo jet, but has also been determined to disseminate a variety of other more unlikely theories. One Russian theory was that the plane was tailed and shot down by Ukrainian fighter jets in order to get gain US and EU support in their conflict with the rebels in the east of the country.

Flight MH17 crashed in eastern ukraine near the town of Torez last Thursday, killing all 298 people on board.