Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend memorial service for Germanwings crash victims

Berlin, April 17: German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend memorial service for the victims of Germanwings Airbus crash on Friday, media reported.

A memorial service for the crash victims will be organised at Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Around 1500 people including relatives of the dead passengers are likely to take part in the memorial, BBC reported.

German President Joachim Gauck and Spain's interior minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, transport ministers from France and Spain and Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr are also expected to attend the event.

The memorial service is set to begin at 12:00 (10:00 GMT) will be led by the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki and the president of the Protestant Church of Westphalia, Annette Kurschus.

Andreas Lubitz, co-pilot of the Airbus A320 is accused of deliberately crashing it on 24 March, killing 150 people. Most of the victims were Spanish or German.

The Airbus 320 was travelling from Barcelona to Duesseldorf when it crashed with 144 passengers and six crew members on board.

Investigators are still trying to formally identify all of the victims, whose remains were recovered from the crash site near the village of Le Vernet.

OneIndia News