Alps Crash Victims 'Identified By End Of Week'

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All 150 victims of the Germanwings plane crash in the French Alps will be identified by the end of the week, according to French President Francois Hollande.

Speaking at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Mr Hollande said: "The French interior minister confirmed that by the end of the week at the latest it will be possible to identify all of the victims thanks to DNA samples."

This contradicts an earlier report in the German newspaper Bild that the relatives of the victims may have to wait months for their loved ones to be identified, with no guarantees they will all be found.

The head of the Criminal Research Institute at France's National Gendarmerie told the newspaper it would take forensic teams between two and four months to complete the DNA identification process.

Even then, "we cannot promise that we will be able to identify all of the victims," Colonel Francois Daoust said.

The violence with which the Airbus A320 crashed into the mountainside in the French Alps last week has severely hampered the identification of the remains of those on board.

Recovery teams scouring the crash site have said not a single body has been found intact.

Some 78 different DNA profiles have been isolated so far from around 400 body parts, although none have been directly linked to the victims.

Family members have been asked to provide forensic teams with DNA samples to help in the identification.

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Gallery: The Victims Of The Germanwings Crash

American Emily Selke, a recent graduate, was on the plane with her mother Yvonne. Raymond Selke has described his wife and daughter as 'amazing people'. Pic: Facebook

Iranian sports journalist Hussein Javadi was on his way to Austria to cover a football match. A friend said he was 'a kind, loving, caring man'. Pic: Maysam Bizær/Hossein Javadi

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Argentinian Sebastian Greco was on board with his girlfriend. Pic: Facebook

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Argentinian Gabriela Maumus, 28, was the daughter of a firefighter. Pic: Facebook

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Spanish victim Carles Milla Masanas, 37. The businessman was on his way to a food industry fayre. Pic: Facebook

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Investigators are currently working on the theory that the 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, deliberately crashed the plane.

The voice recorder suggested he locked the pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally put the Airbus A320 into a descent.

German prosecutors revealed on Monday that Lubitz had been treated in the past for suicidal tendencies, although no evidence has been found to prove he felt suicidal at the time of the crash.

Christoph Kumpa, a spokesman for Dusseldorf prosecutor's office, said he was known to have paid several visits to doctors in the days and months before and nothing of this nature was found to have been documented.

He said: "There still is no evidence that the co-pilot told before that he'll do what we have to assume was done and we haven't found a letter or anything like that that contains a confession.

"Added to this, we have not found anything in the surrounding be it personal, or his family, or his professional surrounding, that is giving us any hints that enable us to say anything about his motivation.

Lubitz had been given a sick note on the day of the crash, but the note was never submitted to Germanwings.

It has been reported he had also been receiving treatment for an unspecific vision problem which could have affected his ability to fly, although Mr Kumpa said nothing had been found to verify those claims.

Investigators have so far been unable to find the aircraft's second black box, which would provide technical flight data of its final moments.

A road to improve access to the crash site has been built by investigators, who resumed their search on Tuesday.

Three trucks left the dropzone in Seyne-les-Alpes after a 48-hour road-building operation to ease access to the mountainside.

The vehicles now take 45 minutes to reach the base of the slope where debris is spread across some five acres (two hectares), while two helicopters fly overhead to check for pieces that might have been flung further.

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