The identification of the victims of last week's Germanwings crash could take up to four months, the head of the research institute carrying out the work has said.
"Subject to the number of body parts that have been found, the time frame can fluctuate between at least two and four months," said Francois Daoust, the head of the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie in Pontoise near Paris, told dpa on Monday.
"It is better to work to the rhythm of science than to rush ahead and run the risk of making mistakes in the identification," he said.
Daoust also warned that it might not be possible to identify all 150 people who died in Tuesday's crash in the French Alps.
In the crash of an Air Algerie plane in Mali last year, the institute was able to identify 115 of the 116 victims.
"The 116th we couldn't identify because we couldn't recover any of his remains," Daoust said.
The impact of Germanwings flight 4U9525 also occurred at a higher velocity than the Air Algerie flight.
"Therefore, I cannot guarantee to all families that all remains will be found or that in every case they will be able to be identified," he said.
A 31-member team from his institute is now at Seyne-les-Alpes, a town near the crash site.
The experts use cotton swabs to take samples of the remains that are found and then send them to the lab in Pontoise to be analysed.
The DNA found at the crash site will be compared to DNA samples taken from the victims' families.
Share
