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Russia Air Crash Relatives Identify Bodies

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  • Russia Air Crash Relatives Identify Bodies

    RUSSIA AIR CRASH RELATIVES IDENTIFY BODIES
    By Mikhail Antonov

    Reuters, UK
    May 4 2006

    SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Relatives began the grim task on Thursday of
    identifying bodies of some of the 113 passengers and crew killed when
    their Armenian airliner crashed into the Black Sea off Russia's coast.

    In Sochi, the Russian holiday resort near where the Airbus A-320
    crashed, a crowd of about 60 people gathered outside the morgue to
    examine photographs of corpses hanging on a wall.

    Most showed battered faces but some corpses were too disfigured. One
    photograph showed only a man's hand with a ring on one finger. Anyone
    who recognised a relative was ushered inside the morgue to view
    the body.

    "People are, of course, in shock. It is an enormous stress for them,"
    said Yuri Meditsa, a psychologist who was assigned to counsel grieving
    relatives at the morgue.

    "There are bodies that can be identified and there are some that,
    realistically, cannot," he said.

    There were at least five children on the plane which took off from
    the Armenian capital Yerevan early on Wednesday bound for Sochi's
    airport. Most of the passengers were Armenian. There were 26 Russian
    passport holders on board.

    A day and a half after the jet vanished from radar screens, divers
    and rescue workers in boats had pulled 49 bodies from the water,
    officials said. Twenty of the dead had been identified.

    The first bodies will be flown home to Armenia later on Thursday for
    burial, Armenian government minister Hovik Abrahamiyan said in Yerevan.

    Russia air crash relatives identify bodies Thu May 4, 2006 2:52 PM
    BST Email This Article | Print This Article | RSS [-] Text [+] The
    search was going on for more bodies and for the aircraft's "black box"
    flight recorder which should help investigators piece together the
    jet's last moments.

    Crash investigators had picked up a radio tracking signal from one of
    the black boxes lying on the seabed, said Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman
    for Russia's Emergencies Ministry.

    Investigators and officials from Armavia, the airline operating the
    plane, said they believed torrential rain and poor visibility were
    factors in the crash. Russian prosecutors have ruled out terrorism.

    Armavia's managers said the aircraft had initially turned back to
    Yerevan because weather conditions in Sochi made it impossible to land.

    The crew changed course again and tried to land at Sochi a second time
    when flight controllers told them the weather had cleared slightly,
    the airline said.

    FINAL MINUTES

    There was a haunting glimpse into the flight's final minutes on
    Thursday when the Rossiya television station broadcast what it said
    was a taped radio exchange between the crew and air traffic controllers
    in neighbouring Georgia.

    "We are returning to Yerevan," a crew member can be heard saying over
    a crackly radio link.

    "Right now or later?" the controller asks.

    "Now," the crew member replied.

    A special submersible was despatched to Sochi to help retrieve some
    of the debris which, rescuers say, has sunk to the seabed about 500
    metres (1,600 feet) down.

    Russian television showed a rescuer picking up a single, white training
    shoe from the water and adding it to a pile of clothes and shredded
    suitcases on the deck of his dinghy.

    (Additional reporting by Hasmik Mkrtchian in Yerevan and Nataliya
    Borisova in Moscow)
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