Distraught relatives struggle to identify crash victims

GRIEVING relatives, many black-clad and weeping, arrived at a central Athens morgue yesterday to identify the remains of some of the 121 people - including 10 families - killed in Greece’s worst plane crash.

A young woman, eyes shaded by dark sunglasses, slumped to the ground outside the building in the hospital complex, her head in her hands.

An elderly couple clutched each other and embraced as they got off the bus that took them straight from Athens airport to the morgue.

Two men supported a woman, helping her towards an area set aside for the victims’ relatives as her cries echoed around the hospital courtyard.

“What can I say? I have no words to say because I lost my whole brother’s family, two kids and my brother and ... his wife,” said Albert Toutounzian.

Meanwhile, ambulances ferried more bodies from another morgue in an eastern Athens suburb, where the remains were taken after they were recovered from the slopes of a mountainous region north of Athens, where Helios Airways flight ZU522 crashed on Sunday.

Only 45 of the bodies were in a condition to be recognised.

A massive brush fire sparked by the crash burned through much of the wreckage and debris scattered across two valleys and surrounding hills, reducing many of the bodies to blackened remains.

The other 76 bodies could only be identified by DNA tests and other forensic methods, and would remain in the mortuary in eastern Athens, Greece’s Deputy Health Minister Thanassis Yiannopoulos said.

At the crash site near the village of Grammatiko, north of Athens, a firefighter described a scene of devastation: “It was pretty grim down there. There were lots of body parts and I saw a severed head by itself.”

Before they left Cyprus for Athens on a specially chartered flight, angry relatives blamed the airline for the crash. “They killed our families, the government must do something if the airline is to blame,” said Kyriakos Kyriacou. His brother’s family was among the victims.