Investigators are probing how a fighter jet crashed during elite NATO training exercises at an air force base in Spain, killing 11 military personnel and leaving others with serious burns.
Nine French and two Greek personnel died and about 20 people were injured after the two-seater F-16 crashed into parked aircraft at the Los Llanos base in southeastern Spain on Monday.
Speaking before about 70 French military personnel at the site of the accident, France's Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the tragedy "leaves a permanent mark on our collective memory".
"The entire defence community is deeply wounded, as are all our fellow citizens," he added.
Earlier on Tuesday he told reporters that the French military personnel who were on the ground when the accident occurred were "clearly traumatised by what they went through, helplessly".
"It is a horrific and unbearable accident," he added.
The jet - involved in an elite training program - crashed after losing power as it took off, the Spanish defence ministry said, damaging two Italian planes and three French jets.
A source close to the French defence ministry said the F-16 "deviated quite prominently from its route, by 90 degrees, and hit French planes which were getting ready to take off".
"The planes were full of kerosene and there were many people around" which explains why there was a high number of fatalities, the source added.
At least one of the French pilots who died was already inside the cockpit of his plane, according to the source.
A judge in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia was leading an investigation into the accident.
French prosecutors also launched inquiries and French accident investigators were at the base, officials said.
A technical commission was also probing the causes and was set to examine the wreckage, the plane's black box recorders and recordings of controllers' conversations, a defence ministry source said.
The base, near the city of Albacete, hosts elite exercises run by NATO to train military personnel from 10 countries to carry out joint manoeuvres.
The 10 NATO countries that take part are Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States.
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