Families in Tajikistan collect bodies of Gulf air crash victims

Families and friends in northern Tajikistan have been collecting the bodies of eighty-five people who died when a Tajik plane crashed in the United Arab Emirates earlier this week.

The bodies were flown in today.

Crowds of people, many in tears, gathered in the main square of the town of Khojand; the Tajik Prime Minister Yakhyo Azimov spoke of a dreadful tradegy.

Nineteen bodies were impossible to identify and they were to be buried in a mass grave.

Relatives carried the rest of the dead to their towns and villages around Khojand.

Most of the passengers were Tajik, but there were also Uzbeks and Russians.

The sole survivor of the crash in the desert, near Sharjah airport, remains in a critical condition.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service