960404

Brown, other

32 passengers

dead: all bodies

recovered

DUBROVNIK, (Croatia): U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 other people aboard a military plane that crashed in Croatia are confirmed dead, a senior Croatian official said on Thursday.

"Unfortunately all the people who were in the aircraft are dead. We found all the bodies," Miomir Zuzul, Croatian ambassador to the United States, told reporters after rescue teams searched the wreckage site all night in fog and rain.

Zuzul said a total of 33 bodies were recovered in and around the aircraft that slammed into a hill just before its scheduled landing near the Adriatic seaside town of Dubrovnik on Wednesday.

Asked for an explanation of what had happened he said: "It seems the right wing of the plane hit the mountain from the northern side."

"Everything shows that they struck the mountain first with the right wing then with the right engine and then the whole body of the aircraft," Zuzul said adding everything indicated there had been no explosions caused by hostile fire.

"It happened at a little bit less than 700 metres (2,500 feet) and visibility at that height at that time on Wednesday was practically around zero because of the very stormy weather and the rain and the fog," he said.

US ambassador Peter Galbraith said U.S. servicemen had arrived at the crash site during the night.

But he said the investigation of the crash would not begin until search and rescue operations were finished.

Zuzul said one woman was brought from the crash site alive but died en route to hospital. The U.S. government had said earlier it presumed Brown and his party -- 13 prominent U.S. businessmen and 12 government officials -- had been killed.

Glabraith, Zuzul and Croatian PM Zlatko Matesa were now returning to the crash site they visited shortly after the accident.

Brown, leading a major corporate delegation, had been scheduled to meet Croatian officials in Dubrovnik and deliver a speech outlining U.S. policies on reconstruction in former Yugoslavia.-Reuter