US Secretary of State John Kerry has laid out what he called overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and called rebels’ behaviour "grotesque".

Rebels have recovered the black boxes from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and will hand them over to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a rebel leader said yesterday.

US and European leaders have called for international investigators to be given full access to the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash site after rebels in eastern Ukraine took control of the recovered bodies.

The family of an Irish woman killed in the Malaysian air crash are still waiting for information on her remains.

The Ukraine government and the pro-Russia separatists who control the site of the Malaysian plane crash have reached a preliminary agreement to remove the bodies of the victims, a senior Ukrainian official said.

Ukraine has accused Russia of helping separatist rebels destroy evidence at the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines plane shot down in rebel-held territory – a charge the rebels deny.

Artillery fire has killed at least four people in a residential area in eastern Ukraine, spurring more people to flee the besieged city of Donetsk and its suburbs.