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Cypriot crash: 25 were alive
16/08/2005 16:00 - (SA)
Athens - A mystery over the final moments of a Cypriot plane that crashed in Greece deepened on Tuesday when an official coroner said at least 25 of those killed were alive at the moment of impact, including the co-pilot and an air hostess.
Coroner Philippos Koutsaftis said autopsies on the first 25 of the bodies of the 121 passengers and crew showed they were all alive - although not necessarily conscious - when it ploughed into a hillside near Athens.
His comments came as Greece held a day of national mourning for the mainly Cypriot victims of Sunday's crash, the deadliest on Greek soil.
At the crash site at Grammatiko, 40km northeast of the capital, about 15 relatives of the dead laid flowers at the base of the Helios Airways Boeing 737's tailfin still showing the company symbol of a sun figure on a deep blue background.
Religious ceremony
In tears and dressed in black, they joined about 100 people in total, many others bearing flowers and lighted candles, at the religious ceremony, where a Greek Orthodox priest intoned prayers for the dead.
Local authorities had said they would erect a monument on the site.
In Cyprus, where memorial ceremonies were also being held, President Tassos Papadopoulos vowed to do everything in his power to solve the mystery.
Amid mounting anger over the response of Helios to the crash, Papadopoulos said his government would not hesitate to ask for an independent investigation by European Union experts.
25 autopsies completed
He said: "We are determined to find out what happened and apportion blame to anybody who is found responsible for this tragedy."
Koutsaftis said: "We have almost completed 25 autopsies of victims, they were all alive.
"Both the co-pilot and the air hostess were alive" just before the crash.
But, he said it did not mean the 121 people on board were conscious when it fell. "We cannot rule out anything".
Recovery of the body of a stewardess found near the remains of the cockpit suggested she might have tried to grasp the plane's controls in a desperate bid to avert tragedy.
121 passengers 'already dead'
The co-pilot's body had also been recovered in the same area, but not that of the German pilot.
Greece's interior minister had suggested in the immediate aftermath of the crash that most of the 121 passengers and crew were probably already dead when it hit the ground.
The pilots of two F-16 jets, which scrambled to intercept the incapacitated plane reported seeing its co-pilot slumped over, perhaps unconscious, and the pilot not in his seat, while the cockpit's oxygen masks were "activated".
Greek authorities said that while the fighter pilots saw two people seeming to want to take the controls, it was unclear if they were passengers or crew.
Government officials and aviation experts had said that the most probable explanation for the accident was a sudden and catastrophic loss of air supply.
- AFP
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