GRAMMATIKO, Greece (AP) - Charred bodies, tattered luggage and smoldering debris lay scattered among the pine trees in a scenic Greek valley Sunday after a Helios Airways flight slammed into a mountainside, killing everyone on board.
The plane - carrying 121 people, more than a third of them children - broke into at least three pieces. Acrid smoke filled the air. Still intact, the plane's tail section, emblazoned with an ancient Greek symbol of the sun,
rested on a dirt road.
Constantinos Michas, a resident of this town near the ancient city of Marathon, was one of the first people on the scene.
``I took my car and went straight to the mountain. ... I saw about 80 dead bodies, some were children,'' he said. ``There were some body parts but most were just as their mother made them.''
As police cordoned off part of the crash sites with bright orange tape, firefighting planes and helicopters swooped overhead to battle a brush fire started by the crash, which rekindled at the site throughout the day.
One witness described the instant the Boeing 737 smashed into the hillside, 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.
The crash occurred on the eve of a main religious holiday in Greece and Cyprus - a public holiday devoted to the Virgin Mary. A number of black-robed Greek Orthodox Christian were on the scene.
``There is wreckage everywhere,'' Grammatiko Mayor George Papageorgiou said. ``Things here are very difficult, they are indescribable.''
Ambulances relayed bodies to Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens. Crash scene investigators wearing surgical masks said most bodies appeared to be intact with some badly burnt.
In Cyprus, President Tassos Papadopoulos declared three days of official mourning. In Greece, Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis returned to Athens from a holiday on the Aegean island of Tinos.
Source:
Associated Press Writers Elena Becatoros and Derek Gatopoulos
14 August 2005
Photo by Associated Press
