RESCUERS and investigators yesterday combed a barren canyon in Peru's southern Andes where a Boeing 737 crashed into a mountain on Thursday, killing all 117 passengers and six crew members on board.
Officials and reporters on the scene, near the city of Arequipa, said only four to five charred bodies were recognisable in the still burning wreckage of the worst air tragedy in Peruvian history.
"It's confirmed that lamentably there are no survivors," said a spokesman for Peru's Faucett Airlines, which ran the airliner.
Rescuers were collecting the remains in plastic bags yesterday, while onlookers and relatives wept nearby and aviation experts looked through the debris in search of clues to the Boeing's last movements.
The jet left Lima's international airport at 7.12 p.m. on Thursday (0012 GMT yesterday) and went down at about 8:15 p.m. as it prepared to land at Arequipa, 625 miles south of Lima.
Reporters at the scene of the crash 8,200 feet above sea level in the mountainous Ciudad de Dios district near Arequipa said the parts were scattered in two areas.
This, they said, indicated that the jet hit one side of the mountain canyon before bouncing off and crashing into the other.
Faucett and airport officials said conditions were foggy at the time of the crash and added the Boeing may have had mechanical failures prior to hitting the mountain.
"But we really do not know yet exactly what has happened," said a Faucett spokesman, Mr Jorge D'Acuna. "We are still investigating."
The passengers were 66 Peruvians, 42 Chileans, three Belgians, two Bolivians, two Canadians and one Brazilian and one Argentine.
Airport and Faucett officials said the Boeing had been cleared for landing and crashed five minutes before it was due to touch down at Arequipa's Rodriguez Ballon airport.
"The pilot spoke to air traffic control five minutes before it was due to land, but then all contact was lost," added Mr D'Acuna.
One television report said the pilot reported smoke coming from one of the jet's wings before it went down.
Arequipa airport officials said another airliner sighted the Boeing in flames on the ground.
A helicopter flew over the area to locate the crash and direct rescue crews.
Scores of distraught friends and relatives of passengers immediately congregated at Lima and Arequipa airports weeping and demanding information at Faucett offices.
One elderly woman burst into tears after hearing the passenger list read aloud at Lima's Jorge Chavez international airport and cried out "Why her? Why her? Why her?"
The Peruvian Transport Minister, Mr Manuel Vara Ochoa, went to Lima airport to console relatives.
Prior to Thursday's tragedy, the worst air accident in Peruvian history was a crash that killed 89 passengers and crew near the Andean city of Cuzco in the 1970s.
Faulty instruments caused the crash of a chartered Turkish airliner off the Dominican Republic last month, killing 189 people, according to a report in the Washington Post yesterday.
The air speed of the airliner was so low that it stalled and dived into the Atlantic.