Germanwings Airbus A320 crash latest: 150 passengers and crew feared dead after flight 4U9525 tragedy near French Alps
All 150 people on board believed to be dead
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Your support makes all the difference.An Airbus A320 operated by the Germanwings airline travelling from Barcelona to Dusseldorf has crashed in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, southern France. These are the latest updates:
- French President Francois Hollande says no survivors expected
- 150 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants were believed to be on board
- Two Spanish babies and 16 children from the same German school have died
- Local MP describes 'horror' of crash site scattered with 'nothing but debris and bodies'
- French civil aviation authority says the plane disappeared at around 10.47am local time (9.47am GMT) – 46 minutes after take-off
- Plane lost altitude four minutes after reaching its cruising height
- Local people say the plane was flying 'unusually low' over mountains
- French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said “no explanation for the crash can be excluded”
- The crash site has been found by investigators at around 6,500ft in the Alps
- The first images of the snow-covered area have started to emerge
- Shares in Lufthansa and Airbus dropped 4.7% and 2.1% after accident
- A black box has been found at the crash site.
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This was the first crash by a civil airliner in France since the Concorde crash near Paris in 2000, most of whose victims were German tourists.
Mr Hollande said there were likely to be a number of German nationals on board the flight, and that he would be speaking shortly with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
"This is a tragedy on our soil," Mr Hollande said.
The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, said that details of the reported crash remained unclear and that interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve was heading to the region.
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