The rebel commander being blamed for the horrific attack on MH17 that killed all 298 on board has claimed the bodies being recovered "aren't fresh", in the latest bizarre conspiracy theory surrounding the tragedy.
Pro-Russian separatist Igor Girkin has claimed corpses near the debris died days before the plane took off, according to rebel website Russkaya Vesna.
The site claims the leader was told by witnesses at the scene in eastern Ukraine that "a significant number of the bodies were drained of blood and reeked of decomposition."
Commander and self-proclaimed minister of Defence of so the called 'Donetsk People's Republic' Igor Girkin, aka Strelok (C)
Girkin, also known as Strelkov and allegedly a former Russian military intelligence agent, said he couldn't confirm the information but reportedly stated that "Ukrainian authorities are capable of any baseness."
He claimed that a large amount of blood serum and medications were found in the wreckage.
Girkin, is said to be among the laughing rebels that filmed the plane as it crashed.
He allegedly claimed credit for shooting down MH17, posting a boast on the VK social media site, which was later removed. It appears to have mistaken the plane for a Ukrainian army plane.
The calls, which could prove damning to Vladimir Putin, were reportedly made near the village of Chornukhine, 50 miles north west of Donetsk, close to where the Boeing came down.
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“The plane has just been taken down somewhere around Torez. It lays there behind the Progress mine. We did warn you – do not fly in ‘our sky'."
“And here is the video proving another ‘bird’ falling down. The bird went down behind the slagheap, not in the residential district. So no peaceful people injured. There is also information about another plane shot,” he added.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 was shot down Thursday, killing all 298 people aboard. The plane was flying 10,000 meters above an area where Ukrainian forces have been fighting separatist rebels. Each side accuses the other of downing the plane.
Ukraine has accused separatists using Russian supplied missiles of coordinating the attack, but the rebels have denied downing the aircraft, while the Kremlin has accused Kiev of failing to agree a ceasefire.
A general view shows the site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo
Downing Street has said it appears "increasingly likely" a surface-to-air missile had been fired from near Torez, in territory controlled by rebels seeking closer ties to Moscow.
US ambassador Samantha Power, meanwhile, has said Washington could not rule out the possibility that Russia offered help to separatists to launch the missile, believed to be an SA-11.
The toll now includes 189 Dutch, 44 Malaysians, 28 Australians, 12 Indonesians and 10 Britons. One of the victims was a US citizen, holding both Dutch and American passports.
A close-up of the debris from the Malaysia Airlines plane
The blame game between Ukrainian and Russian leaders following the tragedy took a grisly turn Saturday after a Ukraine official published an image purporting to show a tiny corpse of a infant victim of MH17 lying in a field in a sensational attack against Vladimir Putin.
Senior Ukrainian government advisor Anton Gerashchenko posted the graphic picture on Facebook with a message to Putin saying: "This baby's death is on your conscience", before adding "Damn you for centuries!"
As the British Government joined the United States in blaming pro-Russian separatists for the catastrophe, shocking new accounts of the carnage at the crash site have emerged.
Eyewitnesses have described horrific scenes of naked bodies strewn across fields and crashing through buildings.
The Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine
Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists have now denied a "security zone" has been set up around the Malaysia Airlines crash scene amid reports of evidence being compromised.
Ukraine's security service earlier said talks between the two sides "concluded with an agreement to set up a 20km (12 miles) security zone so that Ukraine could fulfil the most important thing - identify the bodies (and) hand them over to relatives".
But a senior official of the pro-Russian rebels' self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said no deal had been reached to seal and secure the site.
Ukrainian rebels may have tampered with the crash site of the Malaysian airliner MH17, it was alleged yesterday, with black boxes removed from the crash site and sent to Moscow "for investigation."
