Investigators were last night trying to find the cause of the latest disaster to strike Switzerland - a plane crash near Zurich at the weekend in which 24 people died.
One theory is that the Crossair passenger plane, which was travelling from Berlin to Zurich, was flying too low in poor weather conditions.
The incident is a severe blow to the Swiss carrier Crossair, which is in the process of taking over Swissair's tainted mantle as the country's national flag carrier and is trying desperately to win back customers.
The financial collapse of Swissair and the ignominious spectacle of its once illustrious fleet grounded and unable to buy fuel has compounded the country's woes.
It was the second crash in under two years for Crossair. A Saab340 crashed after takeoff from Zurich in January 2000, killing all 10 people on board.
"Will it never end?" the Swiss president, Moritz Leuenberger, asked yesterday. "The whole country is suffering. We are absolutely speechless after being dragged from one catastrophe to the next. Our grief is mixed with bitterness because it never seems to end."
Only nine of the 33 people on board managed to crawl away from the blazing wreck of the plane, which came down in a snow-covered forest late on Saturday night, and of those several were in a critical condition last night. All the bodies have been recovered.
One survivor, Miriam Wettstein, told the Swiss television station Tele24: "It was like a nightmare. This only happens in films. I had no time to be scared, I was just very cold. I thought 'I have to get out of here, the plane can explode'."
The American pop singer Melanie Thornton was killed, along with two members of the group Passion Fruit. Thornton was on tour to publicise her solo album, Ready to Fly, and her latest single which had been due for release today.
The dean of the Hebrew university school of medicine, Professor Yaakov Matzner, another leading Israeli doctor, Professor Amiram Eldor, and a Tel Aviv official were among the victims, officials said.
The dead also included German, Austrian, Swiss, Canadian and Dutch nationals.
The plane, an RJ-100 Avro Jumbolino, was built by BAE Systems.
