MOURNERS THROW WREATHS INTO BLACK SEA TO COMMEMORATE PLANE CRASH VICTIMS
Mike Eckel

AP Worldstream
May 05, 2006

Hundreds of relatives and friends of the victims of the Armenian
airliner crash sailed into the Black Sea on Friday and watched somberly
as wreaths of blue, white and red flowers were lowered into the waters
to commemorate the 113 people killed in the disaster.

Some, weeping and clutching photos of their loved ones, tossed their
own carnations, roses and chrysanthemums into the waters at the site
of Wednesday’s crash some six kilometers (four miles) off the southern
Russian resort of Sochi.

Hope dimmed that searchers would recover the bodies of more than half
of the victims as authorities tried to pinpoint the precise location
of the plane’s flight recorders under nearly 700 meters (2,300 feet)
of water.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, head of the emergency
commission formed in the wake of the crash, said 53 bodies have
been pulled from the water and 41 of them identified. He also said
authorities were beginning to collect DNA samples from relatives
of the dead, indicating three was little hope of finding easily
identifiable remains.

Searchers have located radio signals from the Airbus A-380’s two “black
box” flight recorders, but Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu
said difficult conditions were hampering efforts to precisely locate
the boxes and the large part of the fuselage where many victims are
believed to be trapped.

A special diving vehicle was sent to the site to try to pinpoint the
remains of the plane’s fuselage on the sea floor and Levitin said
authorities were searching both in Russia and abroad for equipment
to raise the fuselage.

“I want to say, for us the main element is raising the bodies, because
we understand that for the victims’ relatives not raising the bodies
or fragments would be an even bigger tragedy,” Levitin told reporters.

The plane plunged into the sea in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday in
heavy rain and poor visibility as it was approaching the airport in
Adler, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Sochi, a city wedged
between the sea and soaring, snowcapped mountains.

At one of Sochi’s city morgues, relatives _ mainly men _ paced
nervously, voicing frustration at the recovery effort. Some peered
stone-faced at photographs of mutilated and mangled victims, posted
by the coroner to help in identifying them.

“We don’t care about any black boxes. Finding them changes nothing.
OK, maybe the pilot made a mistake. He’s dead now. And so is everyone
else. They’re all dead. That’s not going to change” said Misha, 39,
who like many Armenians in Sochi, did not give his name fearing police
harassment. “We just want them to give us something of our relatives.”

Lernik Aryuntyan, 52, said he lost his entire family in the 1988
earthquake that devastated Armenia. Then, he was able to find his
family’s remains within three days; now he knows nothing of an elderly
neighbor who died in the crash.

“Give us anything, something small _ a coat, a shoe _ just so we have
something,” Aryuntyan said.

In Adler, along a seaside promenade lying almost directly in the flight
approach to the airport, black-robed Armenian priests and monks led
mourners in a procession. Later, a musician stood outside the town’s
Armenian church, playing traditional Armenian mourning dirges on a
duduk, a clarinet-like instrument. Most of the victims were Armenians.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress