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Ron Brown

33 bodies found in Croatia crash

All aboard Brown's plane identified

April 4, 1996
Web posted at: 1:00 p.m. EST

DUBROVNIK, Croatia (CNN) -- In a series of somber announcements Thursday, officials stamped out any vestige of hope by confirming that no one survived Wednesday's plane crash that killed U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and his entourage of government and business leaders.

Clinton

President Clinton informed Brown's widow early in the morning that Brown's body had been identified, White House spokesman Michael McCurry said.

"The search process is not complete, but I can also say there are no survivors," said Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, at a news conference at the Dubrovnik airport, about three miles from the crash site.

A temporary morgue was set up at the airport and American pathologists were to help identify the bodies, said Dubrovnik's chief pathologist, Igor Boric.

crews searching

Although 33 bodies have been recovered, State Department officials said Thursday that 35 people were on board the plane, including a Croatian photographer and an interpreter. The rest of the victims were Americans. As of noon EST, the department had not released all the names.

There had been a discrepancy on the manifest on the exact number of passengers which had confused officials, Galbraith said.

He and Croatian Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa praised Brown and answered various questions about the crash.

Galbraith/Matesa

"We feel that we not only lost a friend, but also a key player in that game which we know under the name of post-war reconstruction," Matesa said.

The best way to remember Brown and his colleagues is to make peace in the Balkans a reality, Galbraith said.

"Secretary Brown's presence was a sign that peace can bring back to Dubrovnik and to other parts of this war-torn region real prosperity. And that is why he came," he said.

Bosnia

According to Galbraith, the plane went down about three miles northeast of Dubrovnik on a remote mountainside where dirt roads to the site are being washed away by heavy rains. Bodies were scattered across the site -- about a square kilometer (less than a square mile) -- and some were found in the fuselage.

Police were led to the crash scene after a resident of the remote area saw the plane fly over and became suspicious of its location. The resident, who had no phone, ran to a nearby village to alert authorities. (221K AIFF sound or 221K WAV sound)

About 150 Croatian special police as well as NATO peacekeeping soldiers sloshed through muddy roads to reach the crash site.

"Given where it is, I think it's quite extraordinary it was found as quickly as it was," Galbraith said.

He described weather conditions in the area at the time of the crash as "terrible" with some local reports calling the storm the worst in a decade.

Furthermore, Galbraith said the plane "was not where it should have been." The plane, he said, should have flown along the coast, but instead it flew through a valley.

"Beyond that, I don't want to speculate on what might have caused the crash," he said. Investigators were at the scene.

Estes

The goal is to "get the Americans home as quickly as possible," Galbraith said.

Matesa said there was a voice recorder in the tail of the plane that could aid the probe and that investigators were searching for the "black box," or data recorder.

However, Lt. Gen. Howell Estes in Washington said, to the best of his knowledge, a black box did not exist on the military plane.

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