A separatist leader said on Sunday they were keeping what they presumed were the black boxes from the downed Malaysian airliner in the eastern city of Donetsk, but they would need experts to confirm that they were the plane's flight recorders.
"Some items, presumably the black boxes, were found, and they have been delivered to Donetsk and they are under our control," Aleksander Borodai, prime minister of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, told a news conference.
"There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes, but we brought to Donetsk some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner."
Earlier, rescue workers have recovered a flight recorder from the wreckage of the Malaysian airliner that Kiev says militants shot down with a missile, Reuters video shows.
The images show men wearing Ukrainian Emergency Ministry uniforms in the village of Hrabove, in the eastern Donetsk region.
Walking away from emergency vehicles parked at a rural roadside, the men appear to conduct a coordinated search through wheat fields at the crash site.
The local department of Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry in the eastern Donetsk region said 196 bodies had been found at the site where the Malaysian airliner crashed.
"As of 7 a.m. on July 20, in the Shakhtarsky region of the crash site of the Boeing 777, 196 bodies were found," it said in a statement, adding that divers were involved in the search because the area included a reservoir.
The UN Security Council is considering a draft resolution to condemn the "shooting down" of a Malaysian passenger plane in Ukraine, demand armed groups allow access to the crash site, and call on states in the region to cooperate with an international investigation.
Australia - which lost 28 citizens - circulated a draft text, seen by Reuters, to the 15-member Security Council late on Saturday and diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it could be put to a vote as early as Monday.
The draft resolution "demands that those responsible for this incident be held to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability."
It "condemns in the strongest terms the shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ... resulting in the tragic loss of 298 lives" and "demands that all states and other actors in the region refrain from acts of violence directed against civilian aircraft."
The United States and other powers have said the plane was likely brought down on Thursday by a surface-to-air missile fired from rebel territory.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said on Friday that Washington could not rule out Russian help in firing the missile.
Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine to cooperate and insisted that an international investigation must not leap to conclusions. Moscow denies involvement and has pointed a finger at Kiev's military.
Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Moscow of fueling a pro-Russian uprising that threatens to break up the former Soviet republic of 46 million people. Russia denies orchestrating the unrest and says Ukraine's attempts to end it by military force are making the situation worse.
The draft UN resolution "calls on all states and actors in the region to cooperate fully in relation to the international investigation of the incident, including with respect to immediate access to the crash site."
It "demands that the armed groups in control of the crash site and the surrounding area refrain from any actions that may compromise the integrity of the crash site and immediately provide safe, secure, full and unfettered access to the site and surrounding area."
International monitors the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said on Saturday they had been allowed to see more of the crash site, though gunmen still stopped them approaching some of the wreckage.
Russia's UN mission declined to comment on the draft Security Council resolution.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that evidence in the downing of a Malaysian jetliner points to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine using a missile system that came from Russia.
"It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia," Kerry said in an interview on CNN.
Kerry said the information currently available "obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists."
REUTERS