Students stand in front of the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in Haltern am See, March, 26, 2015. The deaths of 16 teenage students and two young teachers in the Germanwings plane crash in the French Alps left the lakeside town of Haltern am See in a state of shock on Wednesday, with the German nation sharing in their mourning and grief. French investigators searched for clues as to why the German Airbus flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf ploughed into an Alpine mountainside, killing all 150 on board, including 16 German students from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school who were on a Spanish language exchange programme. REUTERS
A young German co-pilot locked himself alone in the cockpit of a Germanwings Airbus A320 plane and flew it into a mountain with what appears to have been the intent to destroy it, a French prosecutor said on Thursday.
Investigators and grieving relatives were left struggling to explain what motivated Andreas Lubitz, 28, to kill all 150 people on board the Airbus A320, including himself, in Wednesday’s crash in the French Alps.
French and German officials said there was no indication the crash was a terrorist attack, but gave no alternative explanation for his motives.A German police officer watches officials enter the house believed to belong to crashed Germanwings flight 4U 9524 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz in Montabaur, March 26, 2015. The co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing a Germanwings jet into the French Alps on Tuesday has been identified as 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz. Announcing his details at a news conference on Thursday, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said he had no known links with terrorism.”There is no reason to suspect a terrorist attack,” he said. Asked whether he believed the crash that killed 150 people was the result of suicide, he said: “People who commit suicide usually do so alone….I don’t call it a suicide.” The German citizen, left in sole control of the Airbus A320 after the captain left the cockpit, refused to re-open the door and pressed a button that sent the jet into its fatal descent, the prosecutor told a news conference carried on live television. REUTERS
The Financial Express
