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MH17 black box recorders arrive In UK

The black boxes from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 that crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing all on board, have been delivered to Britain for expert analysis.

The recorders have been delivered to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch headquarters in Farnborough, southwest of London.

"We can confirm that the two black boxes from MH17 have been delivered by the Dutch Safety Board to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) at Farnborough for download," a spokeswoman for Britain's Department for Transport said on Wednesday.

The AAIB team will now go through the information from the cockpit voice recorder which will give them two hours of pilots' conversations as well as studying the contents of the flight data recorder (FDR).

It is thought that the AAIB will be able to send details of their findings to the Dutch within 24 hours - giving the experts in the Netherlands further information of the last moments of the doomed Boeing 777 as it fell to earth in eastern Ukraine.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement late on Tuesday that it was normal procedure to send the boxes, which record cockpit activity and flight data, to the nearest laboratory approved by the United Nations aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

"The international investigation team, led by the Netherlands, has decided to pass the black boxes to the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch for forensic analysis," he said.

As the UK investigators pored over the black boxes, bodies from the crash site were arriving in Netherlands where the country's king and queen were taking part in a national day of mourning.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima are in Eindhoven with relatives of the 298 people - including 10 Britons - killed in the disaster.