We are trying to piece together the bodies of the victims which were scattered over a very large area.

He called me around 7.30pm on Thursday evening and said that his plane crashed somewhere in the forest and asked me to alert the rescue services and police before the line went dead. Which meant the team got there after two hours instead of 40 minutes only.

It took 17 hours to collect all the bodies, many of which were mutilated and strewn over a vast area.

The bodies of the victims have been taken down from the mountain top and transported to Slovakia.

We know of at least 16 dead and at least one survivor so far.

The plane was three kilometers off-course after it had been handed over to Slovakian air control, disappeared off the radar screen at 19:38 and crashed from an altitude of about 3,500 meters into a hill and immediately caught fire.

What we know is there were more than 40 people on board, that the aircraft crashed in an uninhabited area.