The rescue teams found the bodies of the 67 people killed last week between a passenger plane and a military helicopter in the vicinity of a Washington airport, US authorities announced on Tuesday. During the last days, the lifeguards were looking for the remains of the victims of the worst aerial tragedy in the United States since 2001, in which all the passengers who were aboard the two devices died.
The different services involved in the task announced that “they recovered (the bodies) of the 67 victims of the air collision”, specifying in a joint statement that all of them, except one, “were positively identified.” Almost half of the deceased were members of the “community” of artistic skating, American officials of that discipline said Monday.
Rescue teams will now concentrate on “extracting the remaining debris of the Potomac River,” they added. The operations to recover the two aircraft that crashed in the Potomac, very close to the Ronald Reagan airport in the capital of the United States, began on the eve while the search for the bodies continued. Five days after the collision, the first parts of the plane, including part of their fuselage, were recovered from the river on Monday, while the air authorities analyze the black boxes.
According to The New York Times, the Ronald Reagan airport control tower lacked sufficient personnel on the night of the accident, on January 29. Only a controller, instead of two, dealt with the traffic of airplanes and helicopters.
SOURCE: AFP