Relatives of Egyptians killed in Wednesday's Gulf Air crash arrived in Manama, Bahrain, yesterday to identify loved ones among the 143 people killed when their flight plunged into the sea off Bahrain.
A Gulf Air spokesman said 162 Egyptians, including Muslim and Christian clergy, arrived on a special Gulf Air flight from Cairo to identify the bodies from pictures being shown in a Manama hotel.
Witnesses said women cried and two Egyptian men required medical attention after viewing photographs at the hotel. A third man fainted.
A Gulf Air spokesman had earlier told reporters that some bodies might be difficult to identify. Most of the photographs showed victims in body bags with only disfigured faces showing. Some faces looked frozen with fear.
The spokesman said the bodies would be taken to Mina Salman port in Manama where families would be able to collect them.
A list of those killed, published by the airline early yesterday, showed a large number with the same surname. Several regional media reports spoke of entire families who died. A Bahraini official said earlier the first 70 bodies to be recovered were those of children, with 30 of the passengers under the age of 12.
Many Gulf and expatriate families return to their homes in the region around this time to prepare for the new school year at the end of summer holidays abroad.
Nurses comforted the grief-stricken as they emerged after identifying their relatives.
Huddled together in the foyer of the hotel, women sobbed and men tried to comfort them. Others recited verses from the Koran.
One man, racked with grief, collapsed after viewing the pictures.
A Gulf Air statement listed the passengers as 63 Egyptians, 34 Bahrainis, 12 Saudis, nine Palestinians, six UAE citizens, three Chinese, two Britons, and one each from Australia, Kuwait, Oman, Sudan, Korea and Canada. In Washington, a State Department official said an American working as a US diplomatic courier was on the jet. Gulf Air officials did not mention an American among the passengers.
There was also a crew of eight.
In London, the Foreign Office yesterday identified the two British victims as a Scottish woman and a man from London who both lived in the Middle East. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said details were still sketchy but she named the dead Britons as Ms Aileen Woods, who was born in 1972 and lived in Bahrain, and Mr Christopher Keenan, aged about 41 who lived in Abu Dhabi.
Rescue teams, including US navy units, worked through the night to retrieve the bodies from the calm Gulf waters.
Bahrain's Civil Defence director told Bahrain television: "We were able to recover all the bodies. I regret to say that we did not find any survivors. All 143 bodies have been recovered." He said both the black box flight recorder and the cockpit voice recorder had been recovered.
The Airbus crashed after it had made several attempts to land at Bahrain airport. Bahrain television initially quoted unidentified officials as saying it plunged into the sea after an engine caught fire.
Media reports in the region said the pilot did not indicate to air-traffic controllers that he was facing any technical problems.
Film on Bahrain television from the crash site showed mangled pieces from the aircraft's fuselage floating on the water. Suitcases, clothes and other personal items floated nearby as helicopters and boats continued to patrol the area.