Prague-bound Cypriot plane crashes near Athens

On Sunday the world watched a drama unfold -when news agencies reported on the tragic accident of a Cypriot airliner carrying 121 people. The plane which was bound for Prague went down just minutes before it was due to make a scheduled stopover in Athens. As the extent of the tragedy became known, people who feared their friends and relatives could have been on the flight lived through many hours of torturous uncertainty.

Daniela Lazarova was following developments here in Prague. Daniela, what was the situation like at this end?

"Well, obviously the news came as a huge shock, it was not clear at the start whether this was a planeload of Czechs returning home from holiday or whether they were tourists bound for Prague who might have friends and relatives waiting for them here. Ruzyne Airport braced itself to deal with the crisis - it quickly established a number of hotlines, there were psychologists on standby at the airport but it was unable to provide the most important information -which was a reliable list of passengers. That information was blocked by the Greek and Cypriot authorities - most likely in view of the victims' relatives - and as a result there were a lot of rumours flying around. The Czech Prime Minister himself contributed to the confusion when he went public with unverified information about there being 80 Greek children on board. This was later ruled out by the Cypriot authorities but not before it had been picked up by the world's news agencies, so it was quite a chaotic situation with news agencies and radio stations contacting each other and trying to verify what information they had."

Do we have reliable information now?

"Well, regrettably I can't say we do. The Foreign Ministry says it has an incomplete passenger list at its disposal according to which the majority of passengers were of Cypriot nationality, and disturbingly 48 of them are said to have been young people on their way to see Prague. But we can't say for certain since the Foreign Ministry it is still waiting for a full list of names and nationalities from the Cypriot authorities. And although there have been numerous calls for information, no Czechs or foreigners living in the Czech Republic have reported missing relatives or friends."

I understand that the Czech Prime Minister was also very quick to assure the public this was not a terrorist attack.

"Yes, he did - actually he did so even before the Greek authorities said a terrorist attack was highly unlikely. He said later that he had this information from the intelligence services and in a way his reaction is a sign of the times we are living in. I should add that he hastened to reassure the public about this just one day after the daily Pravo published a rather disturbing article in which it said Prague was high on the list of a future terrorist attack and even went on to describe possible catastrophic scenarios. This may explain the Prime Minister's haste in trying to reassure Czechs but naturally we have to await the outcome of the investigation for reliable information on what caused the accident."