At least three Britons are believed to be among the 150 victims in the French Alps plane crash, the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, has said.
Disclosing the figure, he said his heartfelt condolences went to the family and friends of those who had lost their lives. The Britons are among 144 passengers and six crew who died when the Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed on a flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf.
According to Hammond, there may yet be more British dead. “We currently believe that three British people have been killed in this tragedy, but we cannot rule out the possibility that there are further British people involved,” he said.
His announcement came as Germanwings and Lufthansa staff stood in silence in Cologne to honour the dead. Investigators as well as ministers from various governments are at the crash scene in the Alps.
The black box cockpit voice recorder, which will allow investigators to hear conversations between the pilots during the last moments of the flight, was recovered on Tuesday. The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said: “The black box is damaged and must be reconstituted in the coming hours in order to be usable.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Hammond had said it was likely that there were some British nationals on board the flight, adding that the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch, and UK disaster victim identification experts, were standing by to offer assistance to the French authorities, if required.
Among the 150 dead, 67 were German and 45 were Spanish nationals. The first of the Spanish victims were named by the media on Wednesday morning.
Among the Spanish dead were Marina Bandrés López-Belio, a 37-year-old from Huesca, who had been on the flight with her seven-month-old baby, reported news agency Efe. Sources close to the family said she lived in Manchester, but had travelled to Zaragoza for the funeral of a family member.
Others named by Spanish media included Carles Milla Masanas, the father of a two-year-old; Joseph Sabaté Casellas, a 38-year-old director for clothing firm Esprit who was expecting his fourth child; and Enric Guiot, 60, who travelled once a week between Barcelona and Düsseldorf for business.
Also on the flight were 16 pupils from the Josef-König school in Haltern, western Germany, who were heading home after a week-long exchange with students at a school near Barcelona. The headmaster said on Wednesday he was “shell-shocked and speechless”.
