The field near the tiny rural hamlet where MH17 plunged to the ground was a scene of smouldering charred earth and twisted metal as shocked locals milled about, trying to comprehend what had happened. A piece of the plane's fuselage with two window frames intact and a section of one of the two engines were about the most obvious evidence that this had been a passenger plane carrying hundreds of people when it took off from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport early Thursday afternoon.
Body parts belonging to the 280 passengers on board the plane were strewn around the scene. The remains of what appeared to be a young woman were flung about 500 metres from the epicentre of the crash, while a dismembered foot could be seen on the one road leading through the village. Debris was thought to spread over an area 15km wide.
A strong smell of aviation fuel and burnt rubber hung in the air as dozens of pro-Russian separatist fighters milled around to control access to the area in which workers from the emergency services were sifting through the wreckage. Some 10 fire engines remained on the scene as night fell after rushing there to extinguish the many blazes sparked by the crash.
According to Russia's Interfax agency, separatists said they had found the plane's "black box" flight recorder, but the claim could not be confirmed.
One local resident, Alexander, was working in the field a few hundred metres away from the plane's final resting place when he looked up. He said he feared the aircraft was going to fall on top of him as it dropped out of the sky.
Another farmer said he was on his tractor when he heard the plane, followed by a loud bang. "Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two – there was thick black smoke," he said.
The house in which another Grabovo resident, also named Alexander, and his relative called Olga live in was just metres away from the crash site. They said they thought the village was being bombed after hearing two or three loud bangs before the force of the impact threw them to the ground. Olga said she was terrified by the incident, which damaged their house and set part of their back garden alight.
Until now the village about 30km from the Russian border had not been affected by the conflict that has struck many parts of eastern Ukraine over the past three months.
