Reuters AlertNet Lite - Brazil crash victims' relatives journey to site

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Brazil crash victims' relatives journey to site

02 Oct 2006 21:18:07 GMT
Source: Reuters

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Brazilian Maria Sigueira shows photographs of her son and daughter-in-law to the media at a hotel in Brasilia, where other relatives of passengers are gathered, October 2, 2006. Sigueira's son and daughter-in-law were killed last Friday along with 153 others when Gol airlines flight 1907 clipped a smaller jet and crashed in the Amazon jungle. The air disaster, with 155 dead, was the worst in Brazil's history.
REUTERS/STRINGER/BRAZIL

(Updates with black box found, paragraph 4)

By Eduardo Lima

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Grieving relatives of 155 people killed in Brazil's worst aviation disaster arrived in the Amazon on Monday to fly over the wreckage as searchers tried to recover corpses in the dense jungle.

The relatives had earlier complained that authorities kept them in the dark about the search for bodies and the investigation into Friday's crash of a brand-new Boeing 737-800 belonging to Brazil's budget Gol airline <GOLL4.SA>.

All 149 passengers and six crew died in the crash after the plane and a smaller executive jet appear to have clipped wings in mid-air.

The Brazilian Air Force reported that rescue teams recovered the black box flight recorder of the Gol plane.

The air force flew a group of six victims' relatives to the crash site in northern Mato Grosso state, about 600 miles (1,000 km) northwest of Brasilia.

An air force spokesman said the idea was to show to them how difficult it was for rescue workers to reach the plane, which plunged nose first into the rainforest and disintegrated. Only two bodies were recovered by Sunday.

"They will be able to see the difficulties of the operation ... The place is difficult (to access), there are trees of up to 40 meters (130 feet) tall," the spokesman said. "The debris is scattered so rescue work is even more complicated."

The disaster site was found on Saturday and rescuers had to rappel down from helicopters while others hacked through thick jungle guided by local Indians to reach the wreckage.

The smaller executive jet involved in the incident made an emergency landing at the Cachimbo air force base on Friday with five passengers on board, none of whom was hurt.

The Gol plane had departed from Manaus, a river port, tourist center and manufacturing zone in th heart of the Amazon, bound for Brasilia with a final destination of Rio de Janeiro.

The previous worst air disaster in Brazilian history was the June 1982 crash of a Vasp flight which hit a mountain near Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, killing 137 people.

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Last updated:Mon Oct 2 21:23:16 2006