Families hold crash memorial

Relatives take flowers to lay at their childrens' grave as they board the plane to Germany

UEBERLINGEN, Germany -- Relatives have held a memorial service for the 71 passengers and crew killed in a mid-air collision over southern Germany.

Family members of the victims -- the bulk of whom were the elite children from the Russian republic of Bashkortostan -- arrived at Friedrichshafen airport, near the Swiss-German border on Thursday.

Many of them had earlier left Ufa, where most of the children were from, clutching flowers.

A small memorial service was held for family members near the site at of the crash Ueberlingen, near Lake Constance.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Police and rescue workers search the wreckage. CNN's Stephanie Halasz reports (July 4) Play video Investigators try to determine why two planes with anti-collision devices hit each other. CNN's Alessio Vinci reports (July 2) Play video Many victims were children from Bashkortostan going to Spain for a holiday. CNN's Jill Dougherty reports (July 3) Play video   RESOURCES Gallery: Jets collide over Germany  Gallery: Relatives' grief    MORE STORIES • Trauma for Russia crash relatives  • Mid-air crash: Focus of inquiry  • Terror at 36,000 feet  • Children's holiday party on doomed plane  • Planes crashed in 'ball of flames'  • Crash comes after air traffic change  • Midair crash: Nightmare scenario    EXTRA INFORMATION • Map: Crash area  • Details of the jets  • Major Russian crashes  • Recent plane crashes     QUICKVOTE Has the German air crash reduced your confidence in air safety systems? Yes No View Results

Ahead of them was the grim task of identifying their loved ones, including 45 children.

German police said the bodies of 67 of the victims had been recovered from the debris. Up to 800 police have been involved in the search.

Relatives have been asked to provide dental records to help in the identification process.

The wreckage from the two planes, a DHL Boeing 757 cargo plane and a Russian Tu-154 passenger jet, were scattered over a 20-mile area following the collision late on Monday.

Counsellors have been called in hand to help distressed relatives at the scene.

The families are expected to lay flowers at the site and have requested that a mullah, a Muslim prayer leader, will be available. Bashkortostan, in the Ural Mountains, is a mainly Muslim region.

Visas were rushed through to allow the families to travel to Germany. Forty-five of the 71 victims were believed to be children on their way to a holiday in Spain who had missed an earlier flight. (Full story)

Yulai Yuldashbayev was flying alone to the site.

His daughter Irina, 14, died and he said his wife, Liliya, was too upset to travel to the scene.

"My wife shouldn't see what happened there. People who have fallen from 12,000 kilometres, there nothing that remains," he told The Associated Press.

Other victims included four adult escorts and 12 crew members of the Russian Tu-154 jet.

It was originally feared that 52 of the passengers had been children. Instead, seven other passengers and a representative of the Moscow travel agency organising the trip were onboard.

All four cockpit voice and flight data recorders have been recovered to help investigators from Germany, Russia and the U.S. discover the chain of events which led to the tragedy. (Crash investigation)

Khalyaf Ishmuratov, Bashkortostan's Deputy Prime Minister, said: "We plan to try to go and come back in a day. Any parent would want to do this to calm down," Ishmuratov told Reuters.

"People may for instance want to take some of the soil from the spot."

President Vladimir Putin discussed investigations into the crash on Wednesday with his transport minister and the prosecutor general.

"I have just spoken with Chancellor Schroeder and he told me Germany will do everything necessary to carry out an objective investigation," Putin said in footage from the Kremlin broadcast on Russian television.

The cargo plane was en route to Brussels, Belgium, from the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain with a stop in Bergamo, Italy. The captain of the cargo plane was British and the co-pilot was Canadian.