MH17 air crash victims returned to Malaysia

Carried by soldiers and draped in the national flag, coffins carrying Malaysian victims of Flight MH17 returned home yesterday to a country still searching for those onboard another doomed jet and a government battling the political fallout of both tragedies.

The bodies and ashes of 20 victims from the Malaysia Airlines jet that was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July were given full military honours and a day of national mourning was declared, the first for civilians in the country’s five-decade history.

Many people in offices in the nation of 30 million observed a minute’s silence as the hearses were driven from the tarmac of Kuala Lumpur International Airport to private funerals. Some public trains in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, stopped operating.