Switzerland has been plunged into mourning - again - today after a Crossair regional aircraft crashed into a muddy wood just short of landing. Twenty-four people were killed, while nine others managed to walk away from what they described as a horror film.
The weekend accident capped an extraordinary two months of disasters in Switzerland, starting with a rampage in a sleepy regional parliament, the grounding of flag flyer Swissair and a fiery accident in a major Alpine tunnel.
"We are absolutely speechless after being dragged from one catastrophe to the next," said the Swiss President, Mr Moritz Leuenberger. "Our grief is mixed with bitterness because it never seems to end." Crossair flight LX3597 from Berlin crashed late on Saturday just minutes before landing at Zurich Airport.
Officials refused to speculate on the cause of the tragedy. But visibility was poor, with rain and some snow.
Initial reports indicated that the pilot - described as a veteran with more than 20 years experience - was flying too low.
Rescue workers retrieved the flight recorders from the partially intact cockpit of the four-engine British-made Jumbolino Avro RJ-100. Company officials said it was the first crash involving this type of aircraft.
Authorities refused to say whether the pilot was among the two crew members who escaped.
The bodies of 10 people were recovered immediately and the rest were found by last night.
There were five crew and 28 passengers on board. A Zurich police statement said 10 Swiss were on the plane and 13 Germans - including one with dual German-US citizenship.
There were three Israelis, two Dutch and one each from Canada, Ghana, Austria, Sweden and Spain.
"It's a horrible scene and my feelings are indescribable," said Mr Andre Dose of Crossair after visiting the crash site.
The crash was sure to add to the woes of the Swiss airline industry.
Crossair, a subsidiary of the ailing Swissair Group, is taking over parts of the Swissair operations in a complicated, government-financed bail-out that is meant to be completed next spring.
Swissair flights were grounded briefly last month because they couldn't pay for fuel and landing fees and the airline is still struggling to recover customer confidence and fill empty seats.
It was the second crash in as many years for Crossair. A Saab340 headed to the German city of Dresden crashed shortly after take off from Zurich on January 10th, 2000, killing all 10 people on board.
"I was walking the dog when I saw the plane. It appeared to be flying low," said Mr Franz Brunner, a local government official. "Then the sky turned bright orange, as if there was a sudden ball of fire," he told Swiss television.
Airport officials said communication with the flight crew had been normal until the plane suddenly disappeared from the radar screen while trying to land on a runway used for night flights under a new agreement to limit flight noise over Germany.
Swiss authorities later suspended night-time use of the runway, said to be more difficult than others to approach, pending the investigation.
The aircraft broke up on impact. The tail section remained virtually intact.
The body of the plane - where most of the passengers would have been seated - was completely burned out. The cockpit section was partially destroyed.
In television interviews from their hospital beds, survivors said they managed to escape by climbing out of the tail section of the aircraft. All managed to walk to rescuers, but two were said to be in a critical condition.