French Alps plane crash: School stunned into silence at scale of loss

An helicopter flies over Seyne les Alpes, French Alps. Photo / AP

All that could be heard outside Joseph-Konig Gymnasium high school was birdsong and the quiet sobbing of pupils who had lost friends and classmates.

As dusk fell over the small town of Haltern Am See, dozens of children and their parents gathered outside the high school building to light candles and lay flowers in memory of the 16 pupils and two teachers taken from them so suddenly in the Airbus disaster.

"This town has experienced nothing like this for generations," said Antje Bucker, 50. "Not since the devastation of the war has anything so terrible happened here.

"To lose one young life from a school is terrible enough. But 16? It makes you wonder how we will get over it."

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, who visited the scene of the crash and was briefed by French rescue services, described the site as a "picture of horror".

"The grief of the families and loved ones is immeasurable," he said. "We must now stand together. We are all united in great grief."

The 10th grade students from the school were on their way home after a week-long Spanish exchange programme at the Institut Giola in Llinars del Valles near Barcelona.

Sylvia Loehrmann, the Education Minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said: "It was a Spanish language exchange programme and they were flying home after having what was probably the most wonderful time of their lives. It's so tragic, so sad, so unfathomable."

Along with many other residents in the town of just over 37,000, Bucker, a nursery schoolteacher, had rushed to the school when news began to emerge that some of its pupils were among those killed. "By the time I got here there were hundreds of people already standing outside, holding flowers, lighting candles, along with dozens of cameramen and photographers," she said.

"But you know what struck me? The utter silence of the crowd. You couldn't hear a sound, except for one thing - the singing of the birds. The weather is nice, it is early spring and the sun was shining. So of course the birds were singing. It was the most intensely sad, and at the same time disturbing thing I have ever experienced."