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Updated 11.15 pm
SIXTEEN GERMAN STUDENTS and two teachers were aboard the crashed Germanwings plane.
The mayor of the German town of Haltern has said the teens are assumed dead.
The group of students were due to return from a school exchange in Barcelona.
Mayor Bodo Klimpel said that the school heard about the crash through the media and had to do their own research into the incident.
“The city is deeply saddened,” he said.
Everyone is in a state of shock. It is the worst thing you can imagine.
The teenagers and their two teachers had been on a week-long exchange trip to Spain, and their names were on the passenger manifest of the Barcelona-Dusseldorf Germanwings flight, Klimpel told a news conference, fighting back tears.
Although rescue crews have not yet reached the crash site in a remote area of the French Alps, “we have to assume the worst,” he said.
Students have turned up to school today to light candles and were told about the incident when it was likely the plane would not land in Düsseldorf.
Tragic deaths
A total of 67 German nationals were on board the passenger jet, which crashed in the southern French Alps earlier today.
“There were 16 children and two teachers who had spent a week here, poor things. The children were aged about 15,” Marti Pujol, mayor of the village of Llinars de Valles near Barcelona, told AFP.
He said the pupils and teachers left for Barcelona airport on Tuesday morning.
Some of the staff at the high school where they had been on an exchange programme knew their flight number and the time of their flight, he said.
The flight run by Germanwings took off from Barcelona at 9.55am (8.55am GMT) bound for Duesseldorf.
“Everyone in Haltern knew that they were due to arrive in Duesseldorf about noon,” Bockey told AFP.
Pujol said pupils at the Instituto Giola which the German visitors had attended during their exchange were being attended to by the Red Cross and psychologists.
The school’s website – which is now down – says that its student exchange with a Barcelona school was due to end on 24 March. The students had gone to Spain on 17 March.
Halterner Zeitung is reporting that the school has set up a crisis management team.
Two German footballers who are from Haltern have tweeted about the tragedy.
Benedikt Howedes said that he comes from Haltern and has many friends and relatives from there.
He added that he is sad and can’t believe about the terrible accident, and wishes friends and relatives of the victims “the strength to get through this”.
Christoph Metzelder turned his Twitter avatar into the black-and-white photo of the Germanwings logo:
- Additional reporting AFP.
- First published 2.30 pm
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Why are comments being disabled on the majority of articles?
@DK: Why? Why is it in any way important whether an asylum seeker is single???
@Aidy McBride: It’s a shame, as I, like most people I would imagine, only come here for the comments. The actual news delivery isn’t great so if there’s no comments I can’t see The Journal lasting long.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: single as in coming on their own here and not as part of a family unit but you new that didn’t you? Just trying to deflect for some reason. Are these men going to want sexual relationships with women here? How many women in Ireland are going to want sexual relationships with asylum seekers, let’s be honest? Do you not think this might lead to issues down the road if we get 50k male asylum seekers every year and about 5k of women? Need to have some adult conversations in this country but too many like to try their best avoid it with deflection like yours and throwing around the racist word.
@DK: Jeez! How sexist can a comment get! You don’t seem tobe worried at all about the 5k women wanting ‘sexual relations’ with good Irish men!
@sean o’dhubhghaill: What’s sexist in my comment. Well those women will have a load of male asylum seekers to choose from if they so wish, not so much choice for the males.
@The next small thing: You’re on to something.
@Aidy McBride: Because of your incessant incendiary remarks.
@The next small thing: Either government or some such like intervention to stifle free speech seen as dangerous, and/or the emerging left liberal stance as seen in the previous iteration of Twitter. If one has to stifle free speech and a possible alternative viewpoint, one doubts ones own point of view.
@Aidy McBride: I guess the Journal doesn’t like free speech, however constructive. ‘The shape of things to come’.
@DK: men are being demonised and portrayed like animals! And that seems to be ok… WOW!! In the era of pc and being easily offended, it seems to be open season when it comes to passing remark on men.
Well what we have learned is that the middle are still being squeezed lifeless.
Voting in chancers like Haughey+Bertie was always going to end in tears. Bertie bought 2007 GE and people voted him in despite knowing about his ‘dig outs’. We as voters own the crash too.
Same with Johnson, Trump, Bolsonara.
@James Gorman: FF and Jack Lynch ‘bought’ the 1977 election too, and we, as a nation, are STILL suffering from and struggling with the mad decision to abolish local rates.
I know loads of people in Brand new houses that don’t and never have worked..They seem to squeeze in a feed of pints every day though.
@Redseat92: That’s our politicians for you. Mind you, those are subsidised pints.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: Most underrated comment!
Still paying for it via austerity taxes, (property tax an usc)and those born during the time the banks needed us to give them a loan are about to join the workforce and will also be paying for that bailout.
Also it was only around 2016/17 when markets normalised, not 2013. And we still await taxes normalising. So we are essentially living in those times.
Great nuanced well researched article.
More of this please
@Niamh Hayes: Haha.
My heart bleeds for the squeezed middle and working poor I ALMOST can’t blame them when they turn septic and declare themselves a single parent and go on the housing list.
How can they ever afford a house when they have to compete with councils buying units to give away to welfare tourists.
have your say