Hundreds of people attended a church service at Saint John Cathedral in Den Bosch, southern Netherlands, to pay respect for the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

The plane, which departed from Amsterdam en route to Kuala Lumpur, crashed on Thursday about 40 km from the border with Russia near the Ukrainian regional capital of Donetsk.

More than half of the 298 victims were Dutch.

Mourners from the province of Brabant, where 40 of the passengers of the doomed flight lived, filled the cathedral and lit candles, one for each of the passengers.

Earlier in the day, the Dutch government said it was "furious" at the manhandling of corpses strewn for miles over open country and asked Ukraine's president for help to bring "our people" home.

Observers from Europe's OSCE security agency visited part of the crash site near the village of Hrabove in Eastern Ukraine for a second day on Saturday and again found their access hampered by armed men from the forces of the self-declared People's Republic of Donetsk.

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