Dubai: The bodies of the victims in Saturday’s FZ981 crash in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, are too fragmented for visual identification, Russian media reports.
The remains had been gathered by investigators by 7pm and taken to a morgue, DonDay.ru reports.
Relatives of victims of the crash will not be required to visually identify their loved ones, the report adds, as there are no complete bodies. The plane and the victims’ remains were spread across a 300-metre area.
Identification of the remains will take place with the help of DNA analysis, which will take place today and tomorrow. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said: “ The work of identification will last no more than two weeks.”
Locally, several of the victims were well-known, including a senior doctor at the Rostov Regional Hospital 2 Igor Pakus and his wife Galina; the wife and daughter of the head of the Azov district Valery Bevzyuk; chairman of the territorial election commission of the Oktyabrsky district of Rostov, Elena Chernova and her husband Dmitry; and director of the Centre of Plastic Surgery Regional Clinical Hospital 1, Oleg Chistyakov, with his wife and five-year-old son.
Meanwhile the Governor of Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, has ordered a payment of one million roubles — around $15,000 or Dh55,091 — compensation to each of the victim’s families.
March 20 was declared a day of mourning in the Don region, with a memorial due to take place in the morning.
