At least one American passenger was among 150 people who died when an Airbus A320 jet went down in the French Alps, airline officials said Wednesday, as leaders of three nations visited the crash site.
A full list of the identities of those aboard the doomed Germanwings Flight 9525 that crashed Tuesday en route from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany, has not yet been released by Lufthansa, parent company of the low-cost airline.
However, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said travelers from the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Britain, Japan, Australia, Belgium. Morocco and elsewhere were believed to be among the dead, who included 70 German and 49 Spanish passengers.
"The establishing of the nationality of some of the passengers is proving difficult. We are in contact with a total of 123 families," said Thomas Winkelmann, CEO of Germanwings.
Valls added that he hoped identification of the victims and the release of their names would be done "as soon as possible," but that this information had to come from Lufthansa, which would not release it until all victims' families have been notified.
In Paris, the French air accident investigation bureau opened and began to examine the damaged cockpit voice recorder that was found in the wreckage of the plane in a rocky ravine in the southern French Alps. The recorder is "damaged, but readable," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told journalists outside his ministry in Paris.
Investigators are hoping the recordings will solve the mystery of why the crew failed to respond to air traffic control radio calls and sent out no distress signal as the aircraft descended rapidly before slamming into a mountain around 11 a.m. There was radio silence from the plane for at least eight minutes as it dropped before finally hitting the mountain at an estimated speed of 435 mph.
The French air accident investigation bureau planned to hold a news conference Wednesday afternoon, but Cazeneuve admitted the inquiry would take weeks.
Cazeneuve added that while terrorism was not at the top of the list of possible causes of the crash, nothing had been ruled out.
French President Francois Hollande, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in the crash zone Wednesday. Hollande and Merkel had made a detour to fly over the ravine littered with the wreckage of the Airbus before arriving at the mountain village of Seyne-les-Alpes. Rajoy arrived by road.
They met gendarmes, mountain rescue teams, members of the Red Cross and others involved in the search for bodies and evidence to explain the cause of the crash. French air accident investigators have been joined by their German counterparts at the scene. They were still searching for the second black box, the flight data recorder, on Wednesday afternoon.
The aircraft appears to have exploded into small pieces of debris that are scattered over roughly five acres of barren rocky mountain. An accident investigation team from Paris also was at the scene, added Cazeneuve, the French interior minister.
Searchers also face the grim task of combing the mountain for the remains of the six crew members and 144 passengers, who included two babies and 16 German schoolchildren returning from an exchange trip to Spain with their two teachers. Staff from the Joseph-Koenig Gymnasium school at Haltern-am-See, not far from Duesseldorf, held a special assembly in their memory and staff at Germanwings' headquarters in Cologne organized a silent tribute to the dead.
Special correspondent Willsher reported from Paris.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times7:55 a.m.: This story has been updated with the three national leaders visiting the crash site and other details.
5:05 a.m.: This story was updated to include the most recent passenger figures.
4:57 a.m.: This story was updated to include a statement from CEO of Germanwings Thomas Winkelmann.
4:47 a.m.: This story was updated to include information about passengers who were killed on the Germanwings plane, in addition to the the ongoing search and recovery efforts.
This story was first published at 1:39 a.m.
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