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Video of last moments on Germanwings plane found – reports

A gendarme watches a bulldozer clearing a path to the crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes
A gendarme watches a bulldozer clearing a path to the crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes

A video of the last moments on the Germanwings plane have been found on a mobile phone memory card at the crash site in the French Alps, according to reports.

The "totally blurred and chaotic" footage was reportedly made from the back of the Airbus A320 and features the sound of three metallic bangs - presumed to be the captain trying to break into the locked cockpit.

Reports of the recording came as Germanwings parent airline Lufthansa said it knew six years ago that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, had suffered from a "serious depressive episode".

The airline said it had handed documents to prosecutors, including emails from Andreas Lubitz to his flying instructors.

"In this correspondence he informed the Flight Training Pilot School in 2009... about a 'previous episode of severe depression'," a statement said.

Meanwhile, the bodies of crash victims have all been recovered from the site in the French Alps.

"There are no more bodies at the crash site. Tomorrow 20 mountain troops will head up with the teams to recover the personal belongings," Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini said.

He added that the search was still going on for the plane's second so-called "black box"

Search teams used a new road to reach the crash site setting off from the drop zone in Seynes-les-Alpes after a hectic 48-hour road-building operation to ease access to the remote mountainside.

Trucks can reach the base of the rocky slope where debris remains spread across some two hectares in 45 minutes, while two helicopters hover overhead to check for pieces that may have been flung further afield.

Search teams have to dig into the loose earth on the assumption the black box has been buried, a police officer said. 

The search is expected to be completely finish by 8 April, after which a civilian clean-up group, funded by airline owner Lufthansa, will tidy up the site.

It is exactly a week since the Germanwings jet crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board instantly.

Authorities believe Mr Lubitz, serving as co-pilot on the flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, locked the captain out of the cockpit and steered the Airbus A320 plane into the side of a mountain.

They are scouring his background for a possible motive.

In a lab outside Paris, the process of identifying victims is under way but could take "between two and four months," said one of the police forensic team.

They are already working with around 400 human samples from the site, and had identified 78 distinct DNA strands by the weekend.

Many more samples - each only a few millimetres in size - are expected in the coming weeks.

The team warned that some of the victims may never be identified due to the violence of the plane's impact, which hit the mountain at 700km/h.

French investigators said they would now concentrate on "the systemic weaknesses" that might have caused the disaster, including the logic of locking cockpit doors from the inside, which was introduced in 2001 to thwart terrorist attacks.

It said it would also look into procedures for detecting "specific psychologic profiles" in pilots.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa said it will cancel celebrations, planned for 15 April, marking the German airline's 60th anniversary in the wake of last week's crash.

It chief executive Carsten Spohr described the crash as the darkest day in the company's history.

A memorial service for the victims is to be held in Cologne Cathedral on 17 April.

Footage of co-pilot emerges

Separately, footage has emerged showing the co-pilot flying a glider.

The footage shows Mr Lubitz at the controls of the glider, and is filmed by someone flying behind him.

The source says it was filmed in the last ten years, and it appears to be above Montabaur, Mr Lubitz's home town, some 130km south of Dusseldorf.

The 27-year-old was a member of the LSC Westerwald flight club based in Montabaur.

The German pilot was treated for suicidal tendencies years ago before he received his pilot's licence, German prosecutors said yesterday.

It was the first acknowledgement from German officials that Mr Lubitz had suffered bouts of depression and it is likely to intensify a debate about how airlines screen and monitor their pilots.