KIEV, Ukraine - Separatist rebels who control the area where the plane went down said they had recovered most of the plane's black boxes on Friday and were considering what to do with them. Wreckage and bodies scattered over a wide stretch of farmland after a Malaysian jetliner flying high above Ukraine's battlefield was shot down from the sky, killing 298 people.
For the first day in months, there was no sign of fighting in the area Friday, though there was no official word of a cease-fire. The crash site was sprawling.The cockpit and one turbine lay a a half-mile apart, and residents said the tail landed another six miles away, indicating the aircraft most likely broke up before hitting the ground. Bodies and body parts were everywhere. An assistant to the insurgency's military commander, Igor Girkin, said Friday on condition of anonymity that eight out of the plane's 12 recording devices had been located at the crash site. Since airplanes normally have both a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, it was not exactly clear what devices he was referring to. He said Girkin was still considering whether to give international crash investigators access to the sprawling crash site. Any investigators would need specific permission from the rebel leadership before they could safely film or take photos at the crash site.
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