Passenger plane crashes in the French Alps
Airbus A320 was travelling from Barcelona to Dusseldorf with 148 passengers and crew on board; cause of crash still unknown.
An Airbus A320 passenger plane flying from Spain to Germany has reportedly crashed in the southern French Alps on Tuesday.
The Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf had 142 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants on board.
French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet says debris from the crash has been located and the plane crashed at 2,000 meters altitude in the Alps.
Brandet told BFM television that he expected "an extremely long and extremely difficult" search and rescue operation because of the area's remoteness.
Spain's deputy prime minister says it is believed 45 people on board the crashed plane are Spanish.
French President Francois Hollande said he believed none of the 148 people on board plane that crashed had survived.
"There were 148 people on board," Hollande said. "The conditions of the accident, which have not yet been clarified, lead us to think there are no survivors."
He said there was likely to be a significant number of German victims.
He added: "The accident happened in a zone that is particularly hard to access."
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that he feared between 142 and 150 passengers and crew died in a plane crash in southern France on Tuesday, adding that the causes of the crash were not yet known.
"We of course don't know the reasons for the crash," Valls told reporters. "We obviously fear that the 142 to 150 passengers and crew died today, given the conditions of this crash."
A spokesman for the DGAC aviation authority said the airplane crashed near the town of Barcelonnette about 100 km (65 miles) north of the French Riviera city of Nice.
Valls said he had activated the ministerial crisis cell to help coordinate the aftermath of the crash. He added that he had sent Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to the site of the incident.
The flight 4U9525 reportedly disappeared from the radar at 10.47 local time.
The crashed A320 is 24 years old and has been with the parent Lufthansa group since 1991, according to online database airfleets.net
Germanwings is a low-cost airline based in Cologne, which is wholly owned by Lufthansa.
Lufthansa's Germanwings unit said it was as yet unable to verify reports of the crash.
