A passenger jet carrying 148 people crashed Tuesday in the French Alps. France’s president said no survivors were likely as search-and-rescue teams raced to the remote region. The Germanwings Airbus passenger jet crashed as it traveled from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, French officials said.
French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet says debris from the crash of an Airbus A320 has been located and the plane crashed at 2,000 meters altitude in the Alps. Brandet told BFM television that he expected “an extremely long and extremely difficult” search and rescue operation because of the area’s remoteness.
The airplane sent out a distress signal at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, Brandet said.
Eric Ciotti, the head of the regional council in southeast France, said search-and-rescue teams were headed to the crash site at Meolans-Revels.
In a live briefing Tuesday, Hollande said it was probable that a number of the victims are German. He said the area of the crash was remote and it was not clear whether anyone on the ground had been injured by the crash.
“I want to express my solidarity to the family of the victims,” Hollande said. “We do not not yet know the identities of the victims. It is a mourning we have to go through because it is a tragedy that has happened on our soil”.
Hollande added he would be speaking shortly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The French newspaper La Provence, citing aviation officials, said the Airbus plane carried at least 142 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants.
GermanWings is a lower-cost unit of Lufthansa, Germany’s biggest airline, that has been operating since 2002 - part of traditional national carriers’ response from rising European budget carriers. It serves mainly European destinations. Both Airbus and Germanwings released statements saying they aware of the reports but cannot yet confirm them.
The area where the plane went down is near a popular ski resort.
The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation is sending three people to France to join the investigation, spokesman Germout Freitag said.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the country’s top security official, was headed to the crash site.
La Provence reports the last A320 that crashed in France was back in January of 1992. That crash resulted in 87 deaths.
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