Hundreds gather to mourn air collision victims.

HUNDREDS of people crowded into a square in the Urals city of Ufa yesterday to mourn the 45 Russian schoolchildren who died in last week's mid-air disaster over Germany.

Orthodox and Muslim clergymen offered prayers over the flower-laden wooden coffins the first 33 bodies to have arrived back in Bashkortostan.

"It is a great and heavy loss for everybody," Talgat Tadzhuddin, the chief Russian Islamic leader, said at the ceremony.