Bells peeled and flags flew at half mast across the Netherlands on Wednesday on a day of grief tinged with anger ahead of the arrival of the first bodies of victims from a Malaysian airliner downed over Ukraine last week on a flight from Amsterdam.

 

Prime Minister Mark Rutte led the first National Day of Mourning since the death of wartime Queen Wilhelmina in 1962 in memory of the 298 people killed when flight MH17 crashed in an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists.

 

Amid US accusations that the rebels shot the civilian plane down in error with a Russian-supplied missile, an opinion poll showed an overwhelming majority of the Dutch want economic sanctions imposed on Moscow, even if it hurts their own economy.

 

Windmills around this low-lying coastal nation were set in a mourning position and church bells will toll just before the first military transport planes carrying the remains arrive from Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine.

 

At 4 pm (1400 GMT), two military aircraft, a Dutch Hercules and an Australian Boeing C-17 transport plane are due to touch down at Eindhoven in the southern Netherlands, bearing the remains of the first of the crash victims.

 

The two planes took off from Kharkiv carrying 40 plain wooden coffins after a brief solemn ceremony. The remains of an unknown number of victims were transported in refrigerated rail carriages from the rebel-held part of Ukraine on Tuesday.

 

With 193 of the dead from the Netherlands, Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said almost every family in the country of 15 million knew someone who died or their relatives, contributing to a national mood of shock and grief.

 

"Think of all the people who were flying away on holiday, all the young people who had just finished their final school exams," said Jikkie van der Giessen from Amsterdam.

 

"They were looking fully toward the future and then you're shot down. Whether it was an accident or on purpose, the fact is it's horrible," she said.

 

While many of the passengers on the flight to Kuala Lumpur were tourists, at least six were AIDS experts on their way to a conference in Melbourne, Australia on the deadly disease.

 

Bells will toll for 10 minutes and a trumpet salute will sound as the first coffins are unloaded before relatives of the victims and dignitaries including King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima and prime minister Rutte.

 

Representatives of the many countries whose citizens died in the crash will be present, including the governor-general of Australia, Peter Cosgrove.

 

Trains will come to a stop for a minute at 4 pm as the country observes a minute's silence, Dutch Railways said. No planes will take off or land at Schiphol Airport, from which the Malaysian Airlines flight departed, for 13 minutes around the time the bodies land.

 

A silent memorial rally was planned outside the royal palace in Amsterdam's Dam square on Wednesday evening.

 

DUTCH IN LEAD

 

With so many of their countrymen dead, the Dutch have been taking a leading role in the international effort to recover and identify the bodies and investigate the cause of the crash.

 

Dutch authorities are leading the investigation, with extensive help from other countries. The plane's black box flight recorders, handed over by the rebels' leader, were flown from Ukraine on a Belgian military plane on Tuesday to Britain, where a team of experts will examine them.

 

From Eindhoven, the bodies will be driven in a convoy of hearses to a military barracks near the town of Hilversum, where forensics experts will begin the painstaking work of putting names to the bodies, a process which could take months.

 

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was unclear how many bodies had been transported to Kharkiv and how many have been left behind at the crash site.

 

Rutte, thrust into an unaccustomed spotlight, said on Tuesday the disaster had fundamentally changed the way the Dutch view Russia, urging the European Union to unite behind a firm approach to force Moscow to cooperate with the probe.

 

Rutte has spoken almost daily with US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other European leaders to coordinate the return of the bodies and discuss the investigation and the consequences.

 

With US intelligence pointing to the aircraft having been shot down accidentally by the Moscow-backed separatists, the Dutch mood of sorrow is starting to be mixed with indignation.

 

The poll published in the daily De Telegraaf said 78 per cent of the Dutch would be prepared to impose punitive sanctions on Russia even if it hurt their own economy.

 

The Netherlands has disproportionately large trade and financial flows with Moscow due to its position as an oil and commodities trading hub and an offshore base for companies.

 

The loss of life has few parallels in recent Dutch history. More than 200 Dutch citizens died in the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster, in which two fully-loaded Boeing 747s collided on the ground with the loss of 583 lives, the world's worst civil aviation disaster.

 

The worst post-war disaster in the Netherlands occurred in 1953, when the North Sea flooded low-lying eastern areas one stormy night, sweeping over dikes to take more than 1,800 lives. - Reuters