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Mourners Throw Wreaths Into Black Sea To Commemorate Plane CrashVict

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  • Mourners Throw Wreaths Into Black Sea To Commemorate Plane CrashVict

    MOURNERS THROW WREATHS INTO BLACK SEA TO COMMEMORATE PLANE CRASH VICTIMS
    Mike Eckel

    AP Worldstream
    May 05, 2006

    Hundreds of relatives and friends of the victims of the Armenian
    airliner crash sailed into the Black Sea on Friday and watched somberly
    as wreaths of blue, white and red flowers were lowered into the waters
    to commemorate the 113 people killed in the disaster.

    Some, weeping and clutching photos of their loved ones, tossed their
    own carnations, roses and chrysanthemums into the waters at the site
    of Wednesday's crash some six kilometers (four miles) off the southern
    Russian resort of Sochi.

    Hope dimmed that searchers would recover the bodies of more than half
    of the victims as authorities tried to pinpoint the precise location
    of the plane's flight recorders under nearly 700 meters (2,300 feet)
    of water.

    Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, head of the emergency
    commission formed in the wake of the crash, said 53 bodies have
    been pulled from the water and 41 of them identified. He also said
    authorities were beginning to collect DNA samples from relatives
    of the dead, indicating three was little hope of finding easily
    identifiable remains.

    Searchers have located radio signals from the Airbus A-380's two "black
    box" flight recorders, but Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu
    said difficult conditions were hampering efforts to precisely locate
    the boxes and the large part of the fuselage where many victims are
    believed to be trapped.

    A special diving vehicle was sent to the site to try to pinpoint the
    remains of the plane's fuselage on the sea floor and Levitin said
    authorities were searching both in Russia and abroad for equipment
    to raise the fuselage.

    "I want to say, for us the main element is raising the bodies, because
    we understand that for the victims' relatives not raising the bodies
    or fragments would be an even bigger tragedy," Levitin told reporters.

    The plane plunged into the sea in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday in
    heavy rain and poor visibility as it was approaching the airport in
    Adler, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Sochi, a city wedged
    between the sea and soaring, snowcapped mountains.

    At one of Sochi's city morgues, relatives _ mainly men _ paced
    nervously, voicing frustration at the recovery effort. Some peered
    stone-faced at photographs of mutilated and mangled victims, posted
    by the coroner to help in identifying them.

    "We don't care about any black boxes. Finding them changes nothing.
    OK, maybe the pilot made a mistake. He's dead now. And so is everyone
    else. They're all dead. That's not going to change" said Misha, 39,
    who like many Armenians in Sochi, did not give his name fearing police
    harassment. "We just want them to give us something of our relatives."

    Lernik Aryuntyan, 52, said he lost his entire family in the 1988
    earthquake that devastated Armenia. Then, he was able to find his
    family's remains within three days; now he knows nothing of an elderly
    neighbor who died in the crash.

    "Give us anything, something small _ a coat, a shoe _ just so we have
    something," Aryuntyan said.

    In Adler, along a seaside promenade lying almost directly in the flight
    approach to the airport, black-robed Armenian priests and monks led
    mourners in a procession. Later, a musician stood outside the town's
    Armenian church, playing traditional Armenian mourning dirges on a
    duduk, a clarinet-like instrument. Most of the victims were Armenians.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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