Two military transport planes carrying 40 coffins bearing victims of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 have landed in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven.

Six days after the Boeing 777 was shot down over the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, the first bodies finally arrived today in the Netherlands, the country that bore the heaviest toll in the crash that killed all 298 passengers and crew.

A Dutch Hercules C-130 that Dutch government spokesman Lodewijk Hekking said was carrying 16 coffins was closely followed by an Australian C-17 Globemaster plane carrying 24 coffins.

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