A mother from Manchester and her seven-month-old son are believed to have died on board the doomed Germanwings flight that crashed over the French Alps.
Marina Bandres Lopez-Belio, 37, was travelling with her son Julian after attending a family funeral in her hometown of Jaca in the Pyrenees.
Victor Barrio, the city’s mayor, said she had been on the flight but could not confirm that her Polish husband, who lives with the family near Rochdale, had been with her.
According to friends, Lopez-Belio had booked the Germanwings flight to Dusseldorf as she had been unable to find a direct flight to Manchester.
It is thought she had studied filmmaking at Futureworks School of Media, graduating in 2009, describing herself as a video editor on her Twitter page.
“Some of the teachers of the school saw her grow in our classrooms and have great memories of her. A big hug to all the family.”
Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary, last night said it was “sadly likely” that a number of British nationals were among the 150 people killed when Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 lost altitude and ploughed into a remote region of the French Alps.
He described the crash as a ”tragic incident” in a statement released on Tuesday night, and sent his condolences to those who have lost family or friends.
“I don’t want to speculate on numbers of British nationals involved until we have completed our checks on all the passenger information,” he said. “However, based on the information available to us, it is sadly likely that there were some British nationals on board the flight.
The Foreign Office said it would be providing consular assistance and will give further help as more information becomes available.
American, German, Spanish, Australian, Colombian, Belgian, Danish and Turkish citizens are also thought to be among the dead.
The arduous search for the 150 victims of the worst aviation disaster on French soil in decades was set to resume at dawn Wednesday.
More than 300 policemen and 380 firefighters have been mobilised. Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini said a squad of 30 mountain rescue police would resume attempts to reach the crash site by helicopter at dawn Wednesday, while a further 65 police were seeking access on foot. Five investigators had spent the night at the site.
It would take “at least a week” to search the remote site, he said, and “at least several days” to repatriate the bodies.
Video images from a government helicopter on Tuesday showed a desolate snow-flecked moonscape, with steep ravines covered in scree. Debris was strewn across the mountainside, pieces of twisted metal smashed into tiny bits.
The plane was “totally destroyed”, a local MP who flew over the site said, describing the scene as “horrendous”.
“The biggest body parts we identified are not bigger than a briefcase,” one investigator said.
A crisis cell has been set up in the area between Barcelonnette and Digne-les-Bains along with an emergency flight control centre to coordinate chopper flights to the crash site.
French President Francois Hollande, his German counterpart Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy were expected to reach the scene around 2:00 pm local time.
The 144 passengers were mainly German and Spanish.
“This is certainly the darkest day in the history of our city,” said a tearful Bodo Klimpel, the town’s mayor. “It is the worst thing you can imagine.”
Spain, meanwhile, declared three days of mourning and was to hold a minute of silence across the country at noon on Wednesday.
Opera singers Oleg Bryjak, 54, and Maria Radner, 33, were also on board, flying to their home city of Duesseldorf. Radner was travelling with her husband and baby, one of two infants on board the plane.
Budget airline Germanwings said the Airbus, travelling from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, plunged for eight minutes but the crew made no distress call before crashing near the ski resort of Barcelonnette.
The rapid descent was “unexplained”, Marseilles prosecutor Brice Robin said.
One of the plane’s black boxes has been found, but it was unclear whether it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder. Investigators will continue searching for the second black box Wednesday.
Weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash, with conditions calm at the time, French weather officials said.
Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, said it was working on the assumption the crash was an “accident”.
“Anything else would be speculation,” Lufthansa vice president Heike Birlenbach told reporters in Barcelona.