At morgues and in church services, tearful Cubans on Sunday mourned loved ones who died in the country’s worst air disaster in three decades.
Cuban authorities said that they have identified 20 bodies and recovered all human remains from the field next to Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport where a passenger jet crashed on Friday last week, killing 110 people.
Maidi Charchabal wept and held a photograph of her son Daniel Terrero, who would have turned 22 on Sunday, as she waited at Havana’s Institute of Legal Medicine for experts to complete their identification of his body.
Photo: Reuters
“We are here today so that, even if only in consolation, they hand over his body to us, so we can ... be able to be with him on his birthday,” Charchabal said. “We are very pained by this loss.”
All families have been contacted, and asked to provide blood and objects that could be used in identifications, Cuban Society of Legal Medicine president Jorge Gonzalez said.
The number of bodies recovered by authorities matches the tally of those on board, after accounting for three Cuban women who were the only survivors and were hospitalized in serious condition, Gonzales said, adding that many of the bodies were affected by the trauma of the crash, the flames and the heat, and the identification process could take at least 30 days.
The Boeing 737 belonging to a Mexican charter company and hired by Cuban state-run airline Cubana de Aviacion on Friday afternoon veered sharply shortly after takeoff from Havana and crashed in a fireball in a cassava field.
Its destination had been the eastern Cuban city of Holguin. It was carrying 107 passengers, including five foreigners and a six-person flight crew from Mexico.
Family members of the Mexican victims arrived in Cuba on Saturday to assist in the identifications.
On Sunday, evangelical churches held prayer services for 20 pastors — 10 married couples — from the Nazarene Church of Holguin who died while returning from a spiritual retreat in the capital.
“They were consecrated pastors who during the entire retreat expressed their pleasure,” said the Reverend Pedro Urgelles, their host in Havana. “We believe in eternal life and they have gotten there before us.”
At the Evangelical League Temple, Pastor Fernando Rodriguez projected photos of some of the deceased clerics onto a wall for parishioners and led a prayer.
“Although we may not comprehend why this happened, the believer knows that the Lord is sovereign,” he said to responses of “hallelujah” from the flock.
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