Malaysia Airlines is trying to arrange safe access for relatives of victims to the site in eastern Ukraine where its Boeing 777 airliner crashed killing all 298 on board, a spokeswoman for Amsterdam airport said.

"The relatives, a few hundred of them, are currently being housed in a hotel at Schiphol," the spokeswoman said. Yesterday, the airline's European head said it was sending a Boeing 747 to Amsterdam to take relatives to the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Ukrainian officials have complained that rebels around the crash site are hampering access.

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