Shameful! Sky man rifles through case

Shameful! Sky man rifles through case: Fury over reporter's insensitivity at crash site targeted by looters

Sky News was forced to apologise last night after one of its presenters was seen sifting through personal belongings among the wreckage of Flight MH17.

In a live broadcast, presenter Colin Brazier was shown picking items – including a set of keys and a toothbrush – out of the open luggage before saying: ‘We really shouldn’t be doing this, I suppose.’

Amid growing anger over the desecration of the crash site and allegations of looting by pro-Russian rebels, Brazier’s actions sparked a furious response on social media.

BBC radio presenter Shelagh Fogarty said: ‘Sky!! Get your reporter to STOP rummaging thru the belongings at #mH17 crash site. “We shouldn’t really be doing this” NO S**T Sherlock !! Those items are essentially sacred things now for the relatives. Just appalling.’

Media professor Joe Watson called it a ‘horrible moment for journalism’.

A post by Joey Blower added: ‘Colin Brazier has interfered with a crime scene in the most distasteful manner. It must be investigated fully.

Image;red homecoming dress

A spokesman for Sky News said: ‘Today whilst presenting from the site of the MH17 air crash, Colin Brazier reflected on the human tragedy of the event and showed audiences the content of one of the victims’ bags. Colin immediately recognised that this was inappropriate and said so on air.

‘Both Colin and Sky News apologise profusely for any offence caused.’ Brazier later gave a moving account of coming across scores of human remains at the site.

He said: ‘I’ve been walking around, coming across body parts all the time, many of them charred beyond recognition. Men, women and children, indeterminate frankly, you can’t tell. Very often you are looking at charred spines, that’s all that’s left.

‘It is a truly macabre, horrific situation. There is a degree of anarchy and lawlessness.’

Several witnesses have reported seeing armed separatists rifling through possessions at the crash site and pocketing valuables, including electronic equipment.

Ukraine has also accused members of pro-Russian militia of stealing credit cards and has warned families of those who died to cancel their loved ones’ accounts.

Anton Gerashchenko, a government official in Kiev, said: ‘I have received information that terrorist death-hunters were collecting not only cash and jewellery of the dead passengers but also credit cards. My humble request to the relatives of the victims is to freeze their credit cards, so that they won’t lose their assets to terrorists.’

The crash scene was still not sealed off properly yesterday. Reporters continued to traipse over fields, while local residents wandered around like tourists.

Some respectfully left flowers beside the broken suitcases and smashed computers that littered the landscape.

Many of the piles of possessions seen on Saturday, looted by officials on both sides of the conflict, had been moved again.

Among the small mementos of lives snuffed out were biographies of former football managers Kevin Keegan, Ron Atkinson and Brian Clough, laying beside a main road. There was speculation they could have belonged to the Newcastle United fans John Adler, 63 and Liam Sweeney, 28, who were killed in the disaster.

Elsewhere in the fields of wildflowers and rippling corn, sitting incongruously among aeroplane parts and electrical innards, were heartbreaking little pieces of evidence of the child victims aboard Flight MH17.

A girl’s ‘Secret Diary’ could be seen next to a tiny silver bracelet glinting in the sun and a packet of unopened Haribo sweets.