"That's it, he's gone," said a Saudi man in a calm voice. He then fainted as a Gulf Air official went on reading out to grieving relatives a list of the names of people aboard an Airbus aircraft that crashed in the sea near Bahrain.
"That's it. They are all dead," said another man.
The two men were among the more than 200 relatives and friends who had come to Manama airport in the Gulf Arab state to meet loved ones arriving on flight GF072 from Cairo.
The aircraft had 143 passengers and crew on board, mostly Arab nationals.
When they heard news of the crash, many of the men and women started wailing uncontrollably. Others looked stunned.
Some interrupted the airline official with demands for more details, especially when he read out some first names with only initials of surnames.
"This is the end of me," wailed an Egyptian woman, who was overcome with grief and could not say which of her relatives was on the aircraft. "I want my son," another Egyptian women screamed.
"I have two relatives on the plane," said an Egyptian man with tears streaming down his face.
Most of the passengers were Egyptians and Bahraini.
Cries of grief echoed across the airport as the waiting relatives and friends were told by the airline to return this morning when they would be given more information.
Men held the arms of women, supporting them in their grief, as they escorted them to waiting cars outside the terminal.
Counsellors were rushed to Bahrain airport to help the waiting relatives.
"Tell me this is not true," one man said before he broke down.
At Cairo airport, relatives gathered demanding details about Egypt's second air crash in less than a year.
The scene was reminiscent of the aftermath of last October's EgyptAir Flight 990 crash which left 80 Egyptians dead among 217 people who died when the Boeing 767 plunged into the Atlantic off the US coast.
"Nobody has given us any information," Mr Marzuk Abdelatif Shaladi repeated as he cried. Two brothers of the Egyptian man's son-in-law, who hold Emirati citizenship, were on the Airbus A320, he said.
A woman in tears arrived earlier hoping to learn about her loved ones' fate and was taken by Egyptian security agents to the Gulf Air offices, located in Cairo's New Airport.
Egyptian security had blocked off the offices, only granting entry to those close to the flight's passengers.
"Let us in. We want to know what's going on even if it means we'll go to jail," cried one Egyptian in his 50s.
Relatives were let into the company offices one by one on arrival where they were told that search and rescue operations were still under way.
Later an airline official said Gulf Air was preparing a special flight from Cairo to transport relatives to Bahrain as soon as possible.
A US diplomatic courier was on board the aircraft, US officials and a Cairo airport security source said.
"Bahraini officials have informed the US embassy that they have found a boarding pass that shows a US diplomatic courier was on board Gulf Air Flight 72 when it crashed," a State Department official said.
According to a Cairo airport source, the courier was on the plane but not on the passenger list.
Witnesses who watched the aircraft plunge into the sea said they heard an explosion and saw a flash of light come from one of the jet's engines before the airliner fell from the sky.
"The plane circled twice around the airport and during the second round there was an explosion and then it fell into the sea," one witness at the Gulf Arab state's airport told Bahrain Television.
Mr Shaker Hassan, another witness, told the television station that during the jet's second trip around the airport he saw a flash of light come from its engine before it plunged into the sea.
A Bahraini civil aviation official said that the country would ask US investigators to help with the investigation into the crash.
"Bahrain will ask the US National Transportation Safety Board to take part in the investigation," Mr Ibrahim Abdullah al-Hammar, Transport Ministry Under-secretary for Civil Aviation, told a news conference at Bahrain airport.
Frank McNally reports: Aer Lingus has one Airbus A-320, acquired in recent months and operating on the cross-channel routes, mainly between Dublin and London. However, the company has an order for a further five of the jets, which are expected to be delivered over the next 18 months.
A spokesman said it was too early to draw any conclusions from the Bahrain crash. "Our experience of the A-320 has been very short, but very happy. Obviously we will monitor the findings from this, in common with the many other airlines around the world who use the planes."
The A-320 is "one of a family of shorthaul planes, very widely used", which also includes the A-318, A-319 and the A-321.
Aer Lingus has also recently acquired six A-321s, the largest members of the series, capable of taking up to 220 passengers but used for only about 170 here. These too are working mainly on the Dublin-London trip, as well as on the shorter continental routes such as Amsterdam and Brussels.
The spokesman said an order for six each of the A-320s and A-321s had been placed two years ago. The ones already delivered were "operating very well". The Airbus website says the A-320 series is the "world's fastest-selling jetliner family" and boasts lower operating costs than equivalent-capacity competitors, making it also "the world's most profitable single-aisle family".
A Gulf Air A320 slid off the runway on take-off from Abu Dhabi in strong winds on March 10th, 1997, injuring 86 passengers on board.
Only four previous A320 crashes have caused deaths, the worst being on February 14th, 1990, at Bangalore, India, when an Indian Airlines' aircraft crashed on landing, killing 88 passengers and four crew.