Night of hell when bodies fell from the sky like black rain

The beautiful countryside around Lake Constance is the setting for a cluster of residential schools for mentally disabled children, a region far from the stresses of modern life where they can live and learn in peace. Yesterday, that peace was shattered as people told of the night that bodies came down "like black rain".

In spite of the efforts of more than 800 emergency workers, who toiled through the night searching for victims, some of the residents of these fragile communities, run by the Camphill charity, witnessed distressing scenes, including the remains of some who perished.

"The children heard the planes crashing into each other and saw the debris falling from the sky," said the relative of a youngster at a settlement in Brachenreuthe. "It was like an earthquake. My brother, who lives there, called me in tears over what had happened. The area was sealed off and they gathered all the mentally disabled children together for a long talk about what they had seen. These are fragile people and they were very distressed."

Some of the bodies fell just outside the Salem International College, a famous local boarding school. Students ran out to try to give first aid to any survivors, a young woman student said. When they got there all they found were two bodies, and one of the plane's engines in a field.

Wolfgang Steiner, a gardener at another children's home 200 metres from where the tail section of the Tupolev landed, said: "We came across five bodies just lying in the field next to each other. One had his neck broken, one was missing a foot but there was no blood. I kept saying to myself, 'Why is there no blood?' They were adults, but they looked so small lying in that field."

Überlingen, a pretty resort town of 20,000 people, was under the collision. When they heard the first crash the people said they thought it was a thunderstorm. "But when we looked up into the sky, it was lit up with a great red light," Klaus, a taxi driver, said. Then everything went dark. Then they heard the sound of metal scraping.

Within seconds of the collision, a picture-book landscape had been transformed into a vision of hell. Witnesses talked of a fireball and of wreckage raining down. Debris fell across a 25-mile radius. Astonishingly, no one on the ground was hurt but the first people on the scene talked of seeing residents standing in their gardens in shock, staring at the burning debris around them.

Klaus-Dieter Schindler, from the village of Owingen, where most of the Russian plane fell, said: "I was lying in my bed and I saw a ball of fire in the sky and ran out on to the balcony. Behind the forest it looked like a firework display. In the glow of the fire I saw wreckage falling. It looked like black rain."

The impact has left townsfolk traumatised. A Catholic priest from Owingen said: "Everyone one here is in a state of shock. Wreckage, which included passengers' personal effects like Russian toothpaste tubes, smashed into my neighbour's farmyard. It was horrible."

Sylvia Fischer, also from Owingen, said: "When my son heard the 'thunder' he got on his bicycle and went to see what he could do for any wounded people. But when he got there he saw they were all dead and he turned round and came back. There was nothing he could do for them."

Margarete Lenz had been lying awake when she heard a sound like a thunderstorm. "Our house shuddered. I heard the thud when it hit. Then came the explosion and the fireball."

A wing and the six-wheel landing gear of the Russian charter plane had landed in the next-door yard, clipping off the tops of trees and coming to a rest against a tree 10 yards from the house, leaving a 13-year-old girl and her parents unharmed.

Throughout the area yesterday, bodies were covered with black plastic sheeting where they had been found as the local authorities worked to set up a makeshift morgue.

Another local woman said she watched from the balcony of her house, her teenage son standing beside her, as the plane came down. "I saw a fireball fall 200 metres from where I stood," she said. He said: "It was like an earthquake. All the windows were shaking."

Dirk Diestel, 47, was changing his baby's nappy shortly before midnight when he looked up and saw the huge fireball. "Immediately I thought something horrible had happened," he said. When he went outside, a large piece of one of the plane's landing gear was a few feet from his home.

Klaus Barinka, 42, a ferry-boat captain, said: "The sky became bright all of a sudden. It looked as if the sky was on fire." A caller to a German radio station said: "What I saw looked like a big dark orange light that lasted several seconds and changed in size, first big, then small."

On the ground, rescue workers using infrared cameras searched for body parts. Harald Wanner, a police spokesman from nearby Friedrichshafen. said: "As far as we know, nobody on the ground was injured. For this much debris to fall in an area like this, it's a miracle that no one was hurt."

Erwin Hedger, police chief of Baden-Würtemberg, said that by mid-afternoon yesterday, more than two dozen bodies and a large number of remains had been recovered at 57 sites. Workers had also found the flight data recorders from both aircraft and the cockpit voice recorder of the cargo jet.

On Lake Constance, which is shared by Germany, Austria and Switzerland, more than 20 boats searched for body parts, debris and signs of pollution. As dusk fell, the boats and a small fleet of helicopters suspended the search for more remains until today.

Many people expressed concern that the surrounding watercourses might have been contaminated by the crash.

There have been three other major post-war air accidents in Germany. In 1972 an Ilyushin aircraft run by the East German airline Interflug crashed shortly after taking off from Berlin's Schönefeld airport, killing all 156 passengers and crew. In 1958, 23 people were killed at Munich airport shortly after a plane carrying members of the Manchester United football team took off in wintry conditions after refuelling.

In 1968, 48 people were killed when a British Eagle Airways Viscount crashed into a motorway between Munich and Nuremberg.