Families of Brazil Plane Crash Victims Gather in Sao Paulo, Experts Work to Identify Bodies

10 August 2024, Brazil, Vinhedo: An aerial view shows debris lying at the site of a plane crash in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. Photo: Allison Sales/dpa
10 August 2024, Brazil, Vinhedo: An aerial view shows debris lying at the site of a plane crash in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. Photo: Allison Sales/dpa
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Families of Brazil Plane Crash Victims Gather in Sao Paulo, Experts Work to Identify Bodies

10 August 2024, Brazil, Vinhedo: An aerial view shows debris lying at the site of a plane crash in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. Photo: Allison Sales/dpa
10 August 2024, Brazil, Vinhedo: An aerial view shows debris lying at the site of a plane crash in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. Photo: Allison Sales/dpa

Families of victims of an airliner crash in Brazil are gathering Sunday at a morgue and hotels in Sao Paulo as forensics experts work to identify the remains of the 62 people killed in the accident.
Local authorities said the bodies of the pilot, Danilo Santos Romano, and his co-pilot, Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva, were the first to be identified by forensics experts.
Sao Paulo state government said in a statement Saturday evening that the remains of all the victims had been recovered, The Associated Press reported. There were 34 male and 28 female bodies in the wreckage, it said.
The ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop operated by Brazilian airline Voepass was headed for Guarulhos international airport in Sao Paulo with 58 passengers and four crew members when it went down Friday in Vinhedo, 78 kilometers (49 miles) north of the metropolis. Voepass said three passengers who held Brazilian identification also carried Venezuelan documents and one had Portuguese.
Sao Paulo’s morgue began receiving the bodies Friday evening, and it asked victims’ relatives to bring in medical, X-ray and dental records to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also done to help identification efforts.
Residents said there were no injuries on the ground.
It was the world's deadliest airline crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach. That plane also was an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.

Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa cautioned that meteorological conditions alone might not be enough to explain why the Voepass plane fell in the manner it did Friday.
“Analyzing an air crash just with images can lead to wrong conclusions about the causes,” Sousa told The Associated Press by phone. “But we can see a plane with loss of support, no horizontal speed. In this flat spin condition, there’s no way to reclaim control of the plane.”
Brazil’s air force said Saturday that both of the plane’s flight recorders had been sent to its analysis laboratory in the capital, Brasilia. The results of its investigations are expected to be published within 30 days, it said.
 



Thunberg Leads Pro-Palestinian, Climate Protest in Milan

Thunberg wore a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf symbolising the Palestinian struggle against Israel - AFP
Thunberg wore a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf symbolising the Palestinian struggle against Israel - AFP
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Thunberg Leads Pro-Palestinian, Climate Protest in Milan

Thunberg wore a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf symbolising the Palestinian struggle against Israel - AFP
Thunberg wore a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf symbolising the Palestinian struggle against Israel - AFP

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg attended a climate change and pro-Palestinian rally in Milan on Friday, days after her criticism of Israel sparked a row over protests in Germany.

More than 1,000 people, many of them teenagers, joined a peaceful march in the northern Italian city organized by Fridays For Future, the climate change movement Thunberg helped found.

Wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf symbolizing the Palestinian struggle against Israel, Thunberg walked near the front of the procession as other protesters waved flags, held banners and danced to music.

"Palestinians have been living under suffocating oppression for decades by an apartheid regime, and during the last year with Israel's live broadcasted genocide, the world has once again abandoned Palestine," the 21-year-old said in a speech, AFP reported.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza after October 7 attack by Hamas has killed more than 42,000 people, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Gaza health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures to be reliable.

Thunberg drew a link between global warming and the weapons industry.

"The fight for climate justice is a fight against the fossil fuel industry, just as much as it is a fight against the weapon industries, militarisation and the over-extraction of natural resources," she said.

German police on Tuesday closed a pro-Palestinian protest camp that had invited Thunberg after a rally she attended in Berlin Monday -- the anniversary of the Hamas attack -- ended in clashes with police.

She accused Germany of "silencing and threatening activists".

The Milan march was part of a "national strike for the climate", a series of protests organized by Fridays For Future across Italy.

"Demonstrating is the only weapon we have against the injustice that we suffer," said protester Sofia Parisi, 17.