Brazil plane crash: authorities try to identify victims as bodies recovered | Brazil

Brazilian civil defence teams worked through the night removing the remains of passengers on a plane that crashed on Friday near São Paulo, killing all 62 people onboard.

At least 21 bodies had been recovered by Saturday morning, the São Paulo state government said, with two victims identified on site. All the bodies are being moved to São Paulo’s police morgue.

On Friday the regional carrier Voepass said the plane was carrying 57 passengers and four crew, but on Saturday the firm confirmed another unaccounted-for passenger was on the flight, putting the number of deaths at 62.

The position of the bodies on the crashed plane, physical characteristics, documents and belongings such as mobile phones were being used to aid in identification, firefighter Maycon Cristo said at the crash site.

“Once all this evidence has been collected, we will remove the victims from the wreckage and place them in the vehicle to be transported to São Paulo,” he said.

Relatives of the victims have been brought to São Paulo to help provide genetic material for DNA identification of body parts and other information on the dead, said the São Paulo state government’s civil defence coordinator, Henguel Pereira.

The plane, an ATR-72 turboprop, was bound for São Paulo from Cascavel, in the state of Paraná, and crashed at about 1.30pm (1630 GMT) in the town of Vinhedo, 50 miles (80km) north-west of São Paulo.

Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop planes seating 40 to 70 people. ATR told Reuters on Friday that its specialists were “fully engaged” with the investigation into the crash.

Speaking at an event in southern Brazil on Friday afternoon, minutes after the accident, the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called for a minute of silence for those lost in the crash.