Chapecoense plane crash: Team’s home town gathers for service

The bodies of 50 people killed in a plane crash that wiped out a Brazilian football team have arrived home.

About 100,000 people are expected to attend a memorial service at Chapecoense’s stadium in south Brazil.

Seventy-one people died in Monday’s crash outside Medellin, Colombia, where the team was due to play. Six survived.

The cause of the crash is unclear. But a recording has emerged of the pilot asking the control tower for priority to land because he was out of fuel.

Brazilian President Michel Temer greeted the planes at the airport.

Fireworks exploded as the first of two military planes arrived in Chapeco early on Saturday.

A procession to the stadium then followed, through heavy rain.

On Friday, hundreds of people had lined the road in Medellin to pay their final respects.

The victims include 64 Brazilians, five Bolivians, a Venezuelan and a Paraguayan.

Nineteen of the dead were players with Chapecoense, and many more were support staff and journalists covering the team.

Many fans started to gather in heavy rain outside the stadium early on Saturday, with some having arrived on Friday.

“I will only really believe it when we see the coffins and the families,” one of the fans, Pamela Lopes, told Reuters. “At first there was commotion, but now a great sadness has set in.”

A minute’s silence will be held before every football match this weekend, and football’s world governing body Fifa, whose head Gianni Infantino will attend the service, requested that all players wear black armbands in remembrance.

The team has been described as having “a fairy story with a tragic ending”.

It only won promotion to the country’s top division in 2014, but was on its way to the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final in Medellin when the plane went down.

BBC