Rescuers clear way to jet wreckage

Rescuers yesterday cleared the thick jungle around the wreckage of a Brazilian passenger plane that crashed in the Amazon with 155 people on board, opening the way for teams to begin retrieving bodies.

"The chances of finding survivors are increasingly slim," Milton Zuanazzi, head of the aviation regulator Anac, said of what is feared to be Brazil's worst aviation disaster.

Rescue workers were in the area but still preparing better access through the jungle to site where the brand-new Boeing belonging to the low-cost airline Gol crashed on Friday.

"It is an extremely difficult area for a rescue operation. They've reached parts, they haven't been able to evaluate the entire area," Mr Zuanazzi told a news conference.

A small group of soldiers had rappelled down from helicopters into the crash area on Saturday and set to work cutting down trees to clear a landing spot for helicopters.

About 200 soldiers, firemen, and local volunteers were cutting through thick vegetation to the site with the help of native Indian guides. Mr Zuanazzi said he did not know how long the removal of bodies would take or when an official death toll would be announced. The plane had carried 149 passengers and six crew.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has decreed three days of national mourning for the victims of the disaster, which has overshadowed yesterday's nationwide general election.

The Boeing 737-800 probably hit the ground nose first after it clipped a smaller executive jet, Brigadier Jose Carlos Pereira, head of the aviation authority Infraero, said on Saturday.

Search planes spotted the crash site in Mato Grosso state, about 1,000 km northwest of Brasilia, on Saturday. Authorities lost radar contact with the flight on Friday afternoon as it flew from the principal Amazon city of Manaus to the capital Brasilia.

Manaus is a busy river port and a centre for environmental tourism and has a duty-free manufacturing zone in which several foreign companies have factories.