Greek emergency teams are working through the night to recover the bodies of 71 Greek and Ukrainian passengers killed in the crash of a Ukrainian airliner on Wednesday.

Rescue workers found the broken up fuselage of the plane scattered in a remote gorge in the mountains above Salonika after the biggest air, sea, and land operation in Greek history.

5,000 troops were mobilised in the search

Experts are studying data from the black box of the plane, which crashed while trying to land after a flight from Kiev.

Five rescuers are also feared dead after a Greek Airforce aircraft crashed on Saturday near Athens, an hour before the remains of the first plane were spotted.

The Yakovlev 42 airliner disappeared from radar screens on Wednesday just before its second attempt to land in the northern Greek city of Salonika.

"We are afraid there are no survivors," an official at the Defence Ministry in Greece said.

The plane was reported to be buried under heavy snow and at an altitude of 1,100m. Rescuers blamed the weather for the delay in locating the plane.

"The area has been banned to civilians. The helicopter only saw debris in a steep gorge and it was all covered by snow," the Defence Ministry official said.

The Greek Transport Minister, Tasos Mandelis, said it appeared that the pilot had become "disoriented" and had never landed in Salonika previously.

The passenger plane was run by the Ukrainian-Israeli company Aerosweet Airlines and is owned by Air Ukraine.

It made the flight in place of another airliner, which had developed a problem.

More than 5,000 soldiers joined the search and rescue effort using 29 helicopters and almost 500 other vehicles.
 

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