Relatives struggle to identify crash victims

Grieving relatives, many black-clad and weeping, arrived at a central Athens morgue today by bus, taxi or on foot to try 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 toward 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.

Hagop Toutounzian, 51, his 45-year-old wife Hilda and their two sons, 12-year-old Bariet and 16-year-old Ara, were on the Cypriot government’s official list of victims.

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 yesterday.

Orderlies could be seen dragging body bags, some bloodstained, from the ambulances and into the morgue.

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.

“This is the hardest part of the tragedy,” Yiannopoulos said.

Cypriot coroner Eleni Antoniou was part of a Cypriot medical delegation that travelled to Athens.

“Identification is very difficult because of the state of the bodies,” she told Cyprus Antenna TV. “So far only 10 victims (have been) recognised by 250 relatives. ... Another 250 relatives are waiting their turn to enter the small restricted space. Only five or six relatives enter the room at a time and this is a very slow process.”

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,” said the firefighter, who would not give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the press. “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, sobbing, 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, who said his brother’s family was among the victims.

The Helios Airways flight had been heading from Larnaca to Athens and was to have continued on to Prague, Czech Republic.

The airliner’s pilots had reported air-conditioning system problems to Cyprus air traffic control about a half-hour after takeoff. Shortly after entering Greek air space over the Aegean, the Boeing 737 lost all radio contact.

Two Greek air force F-16s intercepted the plane at 34,000 feet, and the fighter jet pilots could see the co-pilot slumped over his seat. The captain was not in the cockpit, and oxygen masks dangled inside the cabin, government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said.