Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders on Monday paid a silent tribute to mourn the deaths of the 132 victims of the China Eastern Airlines plane crash on March 21.
The moment of silence, proposed by Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, was observed at the start of a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
The Boeing 737 aircraft (flight MU5735) crashed into a mountainous area in Tengxian County, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The plane, which departed from Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, was bound for Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong Province.
All 132 people on board died, according to the national emergency response headquarters for the accident. An investigation to find the cause of the crash is ongoing.
A ceremony was held on Sunday to mourn the victims of the China Eastern Airlines jetliner crash at the crash site in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Flight MU5735 crashed on March 21, killing all 132 passengers and crew on board. The mourning event began at 14:00 BJT.
The staff at national emergency response headquarters for the incident as well as search and rescue personnel stood solemnly in the direction of the ill-fated aircraft and observed three minutes of silence to express condolences to the victims.
Other mourning activities at the search and rescue sites, funeral homes and other places were also carried out by family members of the victims with the assistance of local government staff and working groups.
Some staffers were assigned to attend to the relatives before the ceremony.
“At least two people are assigned to take care of each passenger’s relatives. And all of us are there for them 24 hours a day, responding to whatever they need. Along with staff members, there are also medical professionals, and psychotherapists who are also on duty 24 hours a day,” Zhao Ting, one of the staffers, told CGTN.
A week has passed since the plane crash on March 21, and Zhao said most of the family members are gradually coming to terms with the incident.
Zhao has been attending to the families since the early hours after the crash. She said there has been a noticeable shift in their concerns since then.
“When they first arrived at the hotels, the thing they frequently told us to help was to visit the crash site. And we arranged some visits for them in the past two days, so their demands in this regard are no longer strong. Their current questions are more centered on legal action and compensation,” she added.
Zhao said the biggest challenge for her was the feeling that even her best efforts will not be enough to ease the pain felt by family members.
Sunday’s ceremony was held after the second black box was found earlier in the day.
Investigation into the cause of the incident is underway as the search mission continues.
The second black box’s data storage unit was appeared relatively intact, and sent to a professional decoding laboratory on Sunday, an aviation official told a press briefing.
All 132 victims of the China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 crash have been identified through DNA testing, a civil aviation official said at a news conference on Monday.
The search team will now focus entirely on identifying victims’ belongings and recovering the airplane’s wreckage.
The decoding analysis for the recovered two black boxes is underway, said Zhu Tao, head of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Rescuers have found 36,001 plane wreckage pieces across a search area of 370,000 square meters, Zhu said.
Over 1,100 counselors and medical professionals reached out to victims’ family members.
