It's a staggering figure, two weeks after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky.
As many as 80 bodies could still be lying in the fields of eastern Ukraine where the passenger jet crashed, Australia's foreign minister told CNN on Thursday.
"But we won't know until our investigative teams are on the site and combing the crash site for remains," Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said. "And that's the grisly and sobering task that they must undertake from now on."
And getting to the crash site isn't as simple as it sounds. Investigation at the site as been delayed for days by dangerous fighting in the area.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reached the crash site on Thursday, accompanied by two Dutch and two Australian experts. The monitors used a new route to access the site.
Many coffins holding remains -- collected in the first week after the disaster -- already have been flown to the Netherlands, where the flight originated July 17. But monitors who've gained sporadic access to the site have said bodies and victims' belongings still lie scattered across huge debris fields.
Experts marked locations where they spotted human remains on Thursday, OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said. They hope to continue investigating Friday, he said, and may use cadaver dogs and aerial surveillance to search the scene.
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