"In about three weeks up to 95 percent of the missing [Germanwings crash victims] will be identified and thus officially declared dead," Michael Tsokos, a German forensic scientist and director of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Charite medical school in Berlin told Bild in an interview published on Monday.
According to Tsokos, it is important to complete the recovery of body parts in the next week, as beyond that time frame it will be impossible to make DNA identifications.
So far, experts have retrieved 600 body parts and have managed to isolate 78 distinct DNA strands, including that of Lubitz, according to Bild.
The Germanwings A320 plane en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed in a remote mountainous region in southern France on Tuesday, March 24, killing all 150 people on board.
A record from the cockpit revealed that Lubitz was alone when the plane started its descent. On Thursday, Marseille`s public prosecutor asserted that Lubitz locked the A320 pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the aircraft.
Lubitz reportedly suffered from a severe psychosomatic illness, depression and had vision problems.
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