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 on Sunday.

Alexander Borodai also said the bodies recovered from the crash site in eastern Ukraine would remain in refrigerated train cars at a station in the rebel-held town of Torez, 15 kilometres (9 miles) away, until the arrival of an international aviation delegation.

Borodai said he was expecting a team of 12 Malaysian experts and that he was disappointed at how long they had taken to arrive.

He insisted that rebels had not interfered with the crash investigation, despite reports to the contrary by international monitors and journalists at the crash site.

A wave of international outrage over how the bodies of the plane crash victims were being handled came amid fears that the armed rebels who control the crash site could be tampering with the evidence there.

The key question of who controlled the collection of evidence at the sprawling crash site in rebel-held territory dominated the day's rapid-fire developments.

International monitors say armed rebels have limited their access to the crash site and Ukrainian officials said armed rebels took the bodies away from their workers by force.

Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile Thursday at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000 feet (10,000 metres) above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine.

Both deny shooting down the plane. All those onboard the flight - 283 passengers and 15 crew - were killed.

AP TELEVISION

1. Wide of news conference

2. Cutaway media

3. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Alexander Borodai, rebel leader and prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic

"As of today, 196 bodies of those who died in this catastrophe were removed from the site and moved to refrigerated train cars in Torez where they will remain for now. The OSCE mission examined the bodies. Currently, there are no other (international) experts here to examine the bodies. One thing I will add. We have established contact with a group of 12 experts from Malaysia who will be arriving here in the near future, presumably tonight."

4. Cutaway cameraman

5. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Alexander Borodai, rebel leader and prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic

"I will say that as of today, we have discovered some technical parts from the plane which are assumed to be the so-called black boxes. I stress that we do not have specialists in aviation security in the People's Republic of Donetsk, but we still presume that these are the objects in question (black boxes.) So, these objects were delivered to Donetsk and are now under my control. We wait for the representatives of a specialised organisation, in this case it is the ICAO, to whom we are ready to hand over these objects."

6. Cutaway reporter

7. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Alexander Borodai, rebel leader and prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic

"I am hearing rumours and allegations made by the media that the bodies we collected and continue to collect of those killed in the crash will be taken to Kiev, Mariupol or somewhere else. I am answering: that's not true. We won't move these bodies anywhere until the arrival of observers and experts."

8. Cutaway reporter filming with tablet

9. Wide of news conference

10. Borodai standing up and leaving escorted by his armed bodyguards

Armed rebels forced emergency workers to hand over all 196 bodies recovered from the Malaysia Airlines crash site and then had them loaded onto refrigerated train cars bound for a rebel-held city, Ukrainian officials and monitors said Sunday.

The surprising, rapid-fire developments Sunday morning came after a wave of international outrage over how the bodies of plane crash victims were being handled and fears that the armed rebels were tampering with evidence at the crash site.

A duty officer at the train station in Torez, 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the crash site, said she saw emergency workers loading plane victims' bodies on Sunday morning into five sealed, refrigerated train cars.

She said the train was scheduled to head to the town of Ilovaysk, 35 kilometres (22 miles) further east toward the Russian border, but no instructions had been given about when it would leave or any possible destinations beyond Ilovaysk.

Torez Train Station Coordinator Natalia Huruzhaya said monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe had visited the station and inspected the train.

"I saw them (OSCE) open the train cars. They insisted that the OSCE commission had to confirm what the load of the train cars were," Huruzhaya said.

Russian news agencies said the bodies were heading to the rebel stronghold of Donetsk. Ukrainian officials say they expect to have the bodies eventually delivered to government-held city of Kharkiv, but it's unclear if the rebels will agree to do so.

Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine.

Both deny shooting down the plane.

All those onboard the flight, 283 passengers and 15 crew, were killed.

1. Various of OSCE mission driving on road after seeing the train in Torez

2. High-angle shot of refrigerated train at Torez station

3. Mid of train

4. Tilt up train car latch

5. Wide of camera person filming train cars

6. Mid of train car

7. Close up train

8. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Natalia Huruzhaya, Torez Train Station Coordinator

"I saw them (OSCE) open the train cars. They insisted that the OSCE commission had to confirm what the load of the train cars were. "

9. Various shots of refrigerated train on platform

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and police experts were unable to search a field at the Malaysia Airlines crash site in Ukraine due to security concerns caused by nearby fighting.

Alexander Hug, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Ukraine, said they had to stop the convoy at "a secure location" before the field "due to security considerations".

Despite the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashing on July 17, the OSCE could only start their recovery operation last week.

Hug stressed that the OSCE mission would continue their work "not only in Donetsk itself but all over, in the region and across Ukraine," at the invitation of the Ukrainian government.

The team's top priority is the collection of victims' remains that have been lying out in the open, in the midsummer heat, for more than two weeks.

Recovery has been delayed by the ongoing fighting between pro-Russia separatists and the Ukrainian government in the Donetsk region.

AP TELEVISION

1. Mid of recovery mission cars

2. SOUNDBITE (English) Alexander Hug, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Ukraine:

"We are just back from the fifth day in a row from the crash site. We left this morning Donetsk and then picked up, in Debaltseve, the convoy of a hundred experts of police. We moved with them on to a crash site, on to a field they have not yet searched. However, it was not possible for us to reach that field due to security considerations and we stopped the convoy at a secure location."

3. Mid of maps

4. SOUNDBITE (English) Alexander Hug, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Ukraine:

"Shortly after two in the afternoon we identified a different field, nearby the location we wanted to lead the experts to, and shortly afterwards the experts and police arrived on that field and searched the field for human remains and personal belongings."

5. Mid camera

6. SOUNDBITE (English) Alexander Hug, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Ukraine:

"The OSCE monitoring mission is in Ukraine upon the invitation of the government of Ukraine. It has been here since the 21st of March this year, and has ever since been here in Donetsk and will continue to do its work here in Donetsk region, not only Donetsk itself but all over in the region and across Ukraine."

7. Close zoom out OSCE sign