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Dutch prime minister: Government expects to have 1st bodies of Ukraine victims home Wednesday

Associated Press
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Police officers secure a refrigerated train loaded with bodies of the passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 as it arrives in a Kharkiv factory for a stop on Tuesday, July 22, 2014. The train carrying the remains of people killed in the Malaysia Airlines crash arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Tuesday on their way to the Netherlands, a journey which has been agonizingly slow for relatives of the victims. (AP Photo/Olga Ivashchenko) (The Associated Press)

Two KLM cabin crew reach out into a sea of flowers at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Tuesday, July 22, 2014. A train carrying the remains of people killed in the Malaysia Airlines crash arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Tuesday on their way to the Netherlands. Oleksander Kharchenko, spokesman for the state committee on the crash, said "we will do our best" to send the bodies to the Netherlands on Tuesday. Ukraine has agreed to send remains of all the victims there for identification and forensic investigation. (AP Photo/Mike Corder) (The Associated Press)

Police officers secure a refrigerated train loaded with bodies of the passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 as it arrives in a Kharkiv factory for a stop on Tuesday, July 22, 2014. The train carrying the remains of people killed in the Malaysia Airlines crash arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Tuesday on their way to the Netherlands, a journey which has been agonizingly slow for relatives of the victims. (AP Photo/Olga Ivashchenko) (The Associated Press)

The Dutch prime minister says his government aims to have the first bodies of victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 back in the Netherlands on Wednesday.

Mark Rutte said Tuesday that a plane is ready to bring the first remains back from the Ukrainian government-controlled town of Kharkiv, where they arrived early Tuesday in a refrigerated train.

He said that, "it is our aim — and at the moment our expectation — that sometime tomorrow the first plane carrying victims will leave for Eindhoven."

Rutte said that the identification of some bodies will be quick. But he has warned grieving families of victims of Thursday's crash that killed 298 people that the identification of some others could take "weeks or even months."