KIEV (REUTERS) - A spokesman for Ukraine's Security Council said on Sunday pro-Russian rebels fighting in the country's east were doing all they could to hide evidence that Russian missiles shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17.

"The terrorists are doing everything to hide the evidence of the involvement of Russian missiles in the shooting down of that airliner," Andriy Lysenko told a news conference.

He said the rebels had taken debris and bodies from the crash site in trucks, tampering with a scene that investigators need to be secure to have a chance of determining what, and who, caused the plane to plunge into the steppe.

"The terrorists took 38 bodies to the regional hospital (in Donetsk). About the other bodies, we do not know where they could have taken them," Lysenko said.

Rail workers said on Sunday dozens of bodies from the site were put into refrigerated rail wagons overnight at a station in a town 15 km (9 miles) from the scene.