Wreckage of Ukraine Jet Found in Greece; All 70 Aboard Dead
Rescue teams reached the charred wreckage of a Ukrainian passenger jet Saturday on a remote slope near Mt. Olympus. None of the 70 people aboard survived.
Meanwhile, crews recovered the bodies of five air force officers killed Saturday when their military plane went down on its way to help the search.
Investigators and rescue workers who reached the site of Wednesday’s crash said little remained of the Soviet-designed Yakovlev-42. It was found in dense woods at an altitude of 4,000 feet, about 40 miles southwest of Salonika.
“There are no survivors,” one soldier told reporters as he made his way down the mountain. “The entire time we were up there we found nothing. You can’t even separate the cockpit from the earth. It is one mass.”
Snow-covered debris was strewn in a wide area and down a 300-foot-deep ravine. A black smudge mark among the trees was all that remained of the fuselage.
Defense Undersecretary Dimitris Apostolakis said rescue crews would work through the night.
The heavy snow and thick fog frustrated efforts to find the plane, a search that involved more than 5,000 civilian and military personnel.
Five air force officers, on their way to pick up 150 troops to join in the rescue effort, died when the cargo plane they were in plowed into a hill in heavy fog about 25 miles west of Athens.
Military sources said that, after leaving the capital, the pilot, rushing to pick up the troops, took a shorter but more dangerous route through hilly countryside.
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