German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder led Germany in mourning yesterday at an ecumenical service to remember the 96 Germans killed in Tuesday's aircraft crash in Paris.
Mr Schroder said Germany was "stunned and speechless" after the disaster.
"Our respect goes to the victims, our sympathy to the relatives," he said at the hastily-arranged ceremony at the Expo 2000 World Trade Fair in Hanover.
Mr Schroder expressed his appreciation for the messages of support he had received from people around the world, especially from France, but said all he could do now was to pass them on to the relatives of the victims.
Mr Schroder and his cabinet had already been expected in Hanover before Tuesday's disaster for a planned cabinet meeting.
The ecumenical service was led by the Protestant and Catholic bishops of Lower Saxony, who called on Germans to pray for the victims and their families.
"We think of those who flew off on holiday full of hopes and expectations, and how they were dragged into terror and death. How can this happen?," said Lutheran former state bishop Horst Hirschler at the service.
He told the congregation the true reason for the crash did not lie in the black box flight recorder, but with God.
"The question is, dear God, why must things be so unhappy? Why must things happen like this?," Bishop Hirschler said.
The Catholic bishop of Hildesheim, Josef Homeyer, also posed a question at the ceremony. "God, where were you in Paris?," he asked, his voice cracking with emotion. He told the congregation death was not the final word, and that "these victims will not be forgotten".
As well as church and government leaders, the service was attended by ordinary visitors to Expo. German Transport Minister Mr Reinhardt Klimmt, who arrived in Paris on Tuesday evening, said he was "very shocked" after his visit to the crash site. He said 80 of the bodies had already been identified. "There are still bodies to be recovered. It could be a long process," he said.
The head of the tour company who chartered the Concorde flight yesterday said he was "deeply shocked" by the crash. Mr Peter Deilmann, the head of Peter Deilmann Reederei, also said it was the company's "duty" to continue the cruise.
The 93 Germans on board at the time of the crash had begun their trip in Frankfurt-am-Main. They boarded the Concorde in Paris on their way to New York to begin a Caribbean cruise on the luxury liner, the MS Deutschland.
The victims have been identified as 49 men, 47 women and three children. They were German, except for two Danes, an Austrian and an American. German investigators flew to Paris on Tuesday night to aid French officials in their investigation.
Meanwhile, German telephone operators worked through the night on Tuesday to offer support to the victims' families, who yesterday morning started making their way to Paris to identify their loved ones. Some of the families were coming from holidays in southern France, according to an Air France spokesperson.
German minister of the interior Mr Otto Schily yesterday ordered that all official flags would fly at half mast today as a mark of respect for the dead.
Shocking as it was, Tuesday's crash was not the worst airline disaster in Germany's history. A plane crash three years ago off the coast of the Dominican Republic killed 189 people, most of whom were Germans.
