Rescue operations restart at French Alps crash site

Search and rescue operations restarted on March 25 at the site where a Germanwings Airbus A320 smashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board, an AFP journalist witnessed.
      
Helicopters took over from a nearby improvised base, heading for the remote area of the Alps where the plane crashed on Tuesday, spreading debris over a wide area.

Germanwings budget flight 4U9525, carrying 144 passengers including 16 German teenagers returning home from a school trip, plunged for eight minutes before hitting the side of a mountain in the French Alps Tuesday with no survivors.        

There was no response to desperate attempts by air traffic controllers to hail the pilots.

      
The accident's cause remains a mystery but authorities have recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where debris was believed to be scattered over four acres of remote and inaccessible mountainous terrain, hampering rescue efforts.

 "The black box that was found is the CVR,"a source told AFP on condition of anonymity. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) "was damaged. It has been transferred to Paris this morning."       

A second so-called black box, in this case recording flight data, has yet to be found.

More than 300 policemen and 380 firefighters have been mobilised. Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini said a squad of 30 mountain rescue police would resume attempts to reach the crash site by helicopter at dawn Wednesday, while a further 65 police were seeking access on foot. Five investigators had spent the night at the site.
      
It would take "at least a week" to search the remote site, he said, and "at least several days" to repatriate the bodies.         Video images...