Ukraine Accuses Insurgents of Blocking Access to Crash Site

A miner inspects a piece of debris found in a field in Grabovka, Ukraine. 

A pro-Russian fighter inspected the crash site near the village of Hrabove on Friday. 

KIEV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian government accused Russian-backed insurgents on Saturday of blocking recovery workers from the crash site of #Malaysia Airlines 17, which was shot down by a missile on Thursday, and of trying to destroy evidence surrounding the attack.

“The #Russian-led terrorists are preventing access of the international community and foreign governments to the location where the Malaysia Airlines airplane crashed on July 17 and are obstructing the launch of an investigation,” the government’s statement said.

The government said that it had information that 38 bodies were taken to the morgue in Donetsk, a regional capital that is a rebel stronghold.

On Friday, government officials had said they were planning to take the bodies of the 298 victims of the jetliner disaster to Kharkiv, a city that is under Ukrainian government control. They said a special laboratory would be deployed there to help identify remains and that the inquiry into the disaster, which is to involve experts from several countries, would also be based in Kharkiv.

At a news conference in Kiev on Saturday, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national Defense and Security Council, said he could not provide information about the crash scene, because “terrorists” were blocking the government’s access.

“At present we have limited information and limited ability to obtain formal information,” Mr. Lysenko said. “The people who are working from our side, they do not have the ability of free movement. They are under control of the terrorists. They are guarding the place. They are taking out all the evidence.”

He added, “The terrorists, they collect everything in their hands.”

The government’s allegations of obstruction underscored the difficulty of trying to carryout a recovery operation in what remains an active combat zone.

And even as officials in Kiev demanded free access to the crash site, there were reports of heavy fighting in the city of Luhansk, with at least five Ukrainian soldiers killed, according to the government. Ukrainian news services reporting explosions in the center of the city. New York Time