France mourns Egypt crash dead
2004-01-05 08:34
Cairo - Across France, families and communities mourned on Sunday for the 133 French victims of Flash Airlines flight FSH604, which crashed off the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik on Saturday, killing all 148 people aboard.
In Egypt, French and Egyptians laid wreaths at the crash site and boats resumed searching for bodies and debris from the charter jet, believed to be under 800m of water.
France dispatched a maritime surveillance plane, a naval frigate, 16 scuba divers, and a robot submarine, beefing up recovery efforts and the search for the plane's 'black box' flight recorders that could help explain the crash.
The wife of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Anne-Marie, as well as de Robien, the transport minister, and his junior minister attended a packed church service for the victims on Sunday evening at Paris's Notre-Dame cathedral.
The dead came from across France - families, groups of friends who escaped winter weather to bask in the sun during the Christmas and New Year school vacation. Most were clients of French tour operator Fram, which said it had 125 passengers aboard the flight.
From Talant, a town in eastern France, retired legal expert Philippe Fouchard and his wife Annie were killed along with two of their adult children, their spouses and five grandchildren, said a local priest, Father Jacques Bonneviale.
"He took his children and his grandchildren to Sharm el-Sheik to spend the Christmas holidays together," Bonneviale said. "We're hit by the scale of this drama."
In the Alpine city of Grenoble, the Garrigue family home remained shuttered on Sunday. Alain and Christine Garrigue and their children, Simon, 11, and Marjorie, 8, booked their holiday at the last minute, opting for New Year in Egypt after celebrating Christmas in wintry France.
Formigny in Normandy, with a population of 244 and the site of a battle between English and French troops in 1450, lost Michel Lamy, 41, the mayor since 1995; his wife, Francoise, and their children, Maud, 18, Claire, 15, and Pierre-Louis, 12, said Alain Gueydan, a local official.
Another victim, Lubka Iordanova, 44, was a former fencer for the Bulgarian national team and travelled with her husband, a surgeon, for "several days in the sun," the daily Le Parisien reported.
The village of Preaux du Perche in the Orne region of Normandy also lost an entire family, fish farmer Jean-Marie Bisson, his wife, Marie-Danielle, and their four teenage children. Also killed was Bisson's brother, Daniel.
"It's a village of 550 inhabitants and clearly everybody knows each other," said Pascal Pecchioli, the village mayor.
- AP