at the st. petersburg airport, a memorial strung up, piled with flowers, candles and children s toys. nic robertson is there. hi, nic. hi, carol. people have been showing up here all day to leave flowers, leave st toys. a lot bringing children. we talked to the families. they feel grief stricken and know it could have been them on board that flight. they say they want to show sympathy and support. often, at times, you look around here and see several people crying. grown men among them. it is a very tough time but, of course, the toughest day for the families today. some of the bod doies brought h. 144 bodies brought back. the family members taken to a morgue by government officials to begin the identification progress. the airline company says there was nothing wrong with the plane, no reports of problems, mechanical checks. there was an outside force,
their right to exist. take a look at this, carol. reporter: the yazidi peshmerga fighters, volunteers, former soldiers and a handful of trained officers. looking out over the isis front line. all along here you can see the defensive ditches that have been dug. they come as close as that valley right there. they mortar, they fire on us, they eventually retreat, but it s pretty this vantage point itself was in the not too distant past isis held. just there he said you can see what they did to the yazidi, the houses are completely destroyed. they slaughtered all the families inside. it really drives home how visceral this was. reporter: deputy commander is 66. he s a retired soldier. one of the few here with fighting experience.
arwa damon in cairo this morning. in just a few hours, the second flight will leave for st. petersburg, russia, bringing home the remains of more people who died in that crash. the airport there already turning into a makeshift memorial with piles of flowers paying tribute. cnn s matthew chance live in st. petersburg this morning with more. hi, matthew. reporter: hey, carol. you can see i m standing at pulkovo airport, main airport in st. petersburg, at the arrival gates where families aboard that metrojet airliner to sharm el sheikh on board. a different homecoming. first, the russian plane carrying 144 of the bodies, the remains of the bodies, touching down early this morning. we re expected, you mentioned, another plane to be arriving in the hours ahead, taken to a local morgue where the very grim but necessary formality of identifying the remains will proceed. take a look at the scene behind me, though.
financial flows between russia and the rest of the world. but we feel confident that at this point the sanctions that we put in place are imposing a cost on russia that their overall impact on the global economy is minimal. it is something that we have to obviously pay close attention to, but i think treasury in consultation with our european partners have done a good job so far on that issue. all right. thank you very much, everybody. thank you. president obama speaking in the white house briefing room. good afternoon, i m anderson cooper. we re covering the breaking news of the shootdown of malaysian airlines flight over ukraine. president obama has just addressed the nation about the shootdown of the aircraft. he announced one victim of the crash is an american, a man by the name of quinn lucas shondsman. we re working to get more information about him. the president also said he and the american people stand side by side with the netherlands, a australia, indonesia and other
family to visit family in indonesia. another victim, a dutch national, carolin, a student in the chemistry department. a member of the women s rowing team during the 2011 season. there were three infants on board. this morning, it was the thought of those babies especially that caused samantha power, u.n. ambassador to the u.n., to choke up. yesterday, we were all shocked by the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17. all 298 people aboard, 283 passengers and 15 crew, were killed. as we stared at the passenger list yesterday, we saw next to three of the passengers name a capital i. as we now know, the letter i stands for infant. to the families and friends of the victim, it is impossible to