Cubans mourn plane crash dead, officials ID 20 bodies

HAVANA - At morgues and in church services, tearful Cubans on Sunday mourned loved ones who died in the country's worst air disaster in three decades.

Authorities said they have identified 20 bodies and recovered all human remains from the field next to Havana's international airport where a passenger jet crashed on Friday, killing 110 people.

Maidi Charchabal wept and held a photograph of her son Daniel Terrero, who would have turned 22 years old on Sunday, as she waited at Havana's Institute of Legal Medicine for experts to complete their identification of his body.

"We are here today so that, even if only in consolation, they hand over his body to us, so we can ... be able to be with him on his birthday," she said.

"We are very pained by this loss," she added.

Cuba's chief forensics official, Jorge Gonzalez, said all families had been contacted and asked to provide blood and objects such as photographs and toothbrushes that could be used in identifications.

He said the number of bodies recovered by authorities matches the tally of those on board, accounting for three Cuban women were the only survivors and who were hospitalized in serious condition, so it is believed none are unaccounted for.

Gonzalez said many of the bodies were affected by the trauma of the crash, the flames and the heat, and the identification process could take at least 30 days.

The Boeing 737 and its crew had been rented from Mexico City-based Damojh by EasySky, a Honduras-based low-cost airline. Cuba's national carrier, Cubana de Aviacion, was also renting the plane and crew in a similar arrangement known as a "wet lease" before the aircraft veered on takeoff to the eastern Cuban city of Holguin and crashed into a field just after noon on Friday, according to Mexican aviation authorities.

Mexico said on Saturday that it will carry out an operational audit of Damojh airlines to see if its "current operating conditions continue meeting regulations" and to help collect information for the investigation into the crash.

Mexican officials said the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979.

Associated Press

(China Daily 05/22/2018 page12)