Scenes of death and devastation in valley where plane crashed

BLACKENED bodies, tattered luggage and smouldering debris lay scattered among the pine trees in a scenic Greek valley after the Helios Airways flight slammed into a mountainside and filled the air with acrid smoke.

Constantinos Michas, a resident of Grammatiko near the ancient city of Marathon, was one of the first on the scene.

“I took my car and went straight to the mountain ... I saw about 80 dead bodies, some were children. There were some body parts but most were just as their mother made them.”

The plane - carrying 121 people, about a third of them children - broke up into at least three pieces. Bodies, luggage and parts of the plane were scattered over 12 acres of hillside.

As police cordoned off part of the crash sites, firefighting planes and helicopters swooped overhead to battle a brush fire started by the crash.

One eyewitness described the instant the Boeing 737 smashed into the mountain flanked by two F-16 fighter jets sent to intercept the passenger plane after it failed to respond to radio signals.

“We saw some fighter jets flying very low and after a few minutes we heard a very loud noise and saw pieces of the plane flying in the air,” said Spyros Papachristou.