Cyprus started three days of official mourning Monday as the island recovered from Sunday’s disaster when all 121 people were killed on board a Cypriot airliner that crashed on its approach to the Greek capital Athens.
What should have been a celebration, marking the second holiest day for Greek Orthodoxy, the holy day of ‘Panayia Theotokou’ (the Virgin Mary, Mother of God), turned into a day of prayers as bells chimed somberly and the faithful started their annual pilgrimages to monasteries with a heavy heart.
Being a traditionally close-knit society with a population of 700,000, everybody had a relative or friend that died in the tragic crash.
Complete families were wiped out as most of the travelers, as many as 48 of whom were reportedly children, had embarked on their holidays to Greece or were expected to continue on the Helios Airways scheduled flight to Prague, Czech Republic.
The eastern seaside town of Paralimni declared 40 days of mourning as four families of four had been killed in the disaster with the municipality announcing it would undertake the cost of the burial and would help with the recovery of the remaining families.
One other family of five left behind the sole survivor, a 20-month baby boy, who had suffered a fever and stayed home with his grandparents.
Another family of four shocked the island’s small Armenian community as they traveled together for the first time, with their 12-year-old son boarding his first flight.
Relatives of the air crash victims were also flown to Greece Monday to help in the grueling task of identifying the remains of their loved ones, many of whom were charred beyond recognition and needed blood samples to match their DNA.
Even though the tragedy dominated the front pages of the Monday newspapers, the local media were screaming at the incompetence of the airline as well as the civil aviation authorities that could not give out a list of passengers, even though 24 hours had elapsed. This was expected to happen later in the day.
The responsible Minister of Communication refused to heed to calls by local television stations that the young private airline be grounded, at least in order to show an initial sympathy to the relatives of the victims and to instill confidence to the rest of the airline travelers.
“We have to follow procedures as set out by international aviation regulations,” said Minister Haris Thrassou.
“Panayia mou (Oh, Holy Mother), I lost three children” wrote the daily Politis on its front page. “Why, Panayia mou” pleaded a mother through the daily Alithia, adding that this was a Black Holy Day, while the Simerini newspaper read “Cyprus mourns, whole families wiped out.”
The top circulation daily Phileleftheros has already been chided by the morning television and radio shows for its gruesome display of charred bodies strewn on a hillside on its broadsheet front page, at a time when families had yet to identify their relatives.
The media have also reflected on public pleas for information and that an investigation of the circumstances that surrounded the mysterious crash be concluded promptly and with transparency.
On the other hand, calls for resignation have been directed at civil aviation authorities that granted the leased Boeing 737-300 its air worthiness certificate, while the general public outcry demanded that the airline be shut down.
