Experts comb Swiss air crash site

Investigators have already recovered the flight recorders

ZURICH, Switzerland -- Air accident investigators are continuing to sift through the wreckage of the airline crash in Switzerland at the weekend in which 24 of the 33 people on board were killed.

Flight 3597 from Berlin crashed in poor weather conditions as it followed the flight path into Zurich International airport on Saturday.

The loss of the 97-seat RJ-100 Crossair jet marks a further blow to an airline industry struggling to regain passenger confidence after the September 11 hijack attacks on the United States.

It is also the latest in a series of accidents and catastrophes to hit Switzerland in recent months.

In September, a gunman murdered 13 local politicians in Zug, while last month 11 people perished in fire in the Gotthard tunnel in the Alps.

MORE STORIES Singer among crash dead

"Will it never end?" exclaimed Swiss President Moritz Leuenberger at a news conference on Sunday.

He added: "We are absolutely speechless after being dragged from one catastrophe to the next.

"Our grief is mixed with bitterness because it never seems to end."

Both flight recorders have already been retrieved from the crash site in snow-covered woodland but officials said it could be Tuesday before their data were fully analysed.

In TV interviews from the hospital, survivors said they climbed out of the tail section, which broke away from the plane virtually intact.

"It was like in a horror film, a nightmare," said Myriam Wettstein.

U.S. singer killed

Among the dead and missing are three prominent Israelis, an American pop singer, two members of a musical trio and the aircraft's 57-year-old pilot and his co-pilot.

Israeli officials said on Sunday that the dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine, Professor Yaakov Matzner, Professor Amiram Eldor, the head of the hematology department at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and Tel Aviv city official Avishai Berkman, were among the missing.

The doctors, both haematologists, were returning from a professional conference in Berlin.

Officials want to find out why the pilot was flying so low in a snow shower

Also killed was American-born singer Melanie Thornton, 34, who had a string of hits with La Bouche and was on tour to promote her solo album "Ready to Fly."

Thornton was flying to Zurich for radio and television appearances to promote her new single, said Anja Scheding, a spokeswoman for the record company X-cell.

A pop-music trio called Passion Fruit -- two Dutch women and a German woman of Spanish origin, all 27 -- was also on the plane.

The band's Maria Serrano-Serrano and Nathaly van het Ende were killed, but Debby St. Marteen survived, said the band's manager, Georg Bergheim.

Crossair chief executive Andre Dose said the plane had last been checked on November 16 and a thorough maintenance operation had been planned for January 2002.

The accident, the second fatal crash Crossair has suffered in two years, was a setback its attempt to win customer confidence as it tries to turn itself into a new Swiss flag carrier following last month's collapse of Swissair.

On Monday, the company's shares fell by 11.5 percent when trading opened in Zurich.

The Avro RJ-100 Jumbolino is a four-engined jet built by BAE Systems Plc, formerly British Aerospace.