A class of 16 German school pupils and two teachers are among the victims of the doomed Germanwings Airbus A320 which crashed in the French Alps today, killing all 150 people aboard.
The students - all of whom are understood to be in their teens - were pupils at the English-speaking Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium in Haltern-am-See, not far from the city of Dusseldorf.
The Year 10 pupils were returning home from a week-long exchange programme in Barcelona at the time of the disaster, which took place in a remote region of the French Alps en route from Spain to Germany. More photos after the cut...
This afternoon it emerged that the pupils almost missed the doomed flight when one of the students left her passport behind.
But in a tragic twist her host family offered to race the girl and all her travel documents to the airport directly, allowing them to make the flight in time.
The heart-breaking revelation comes as opera singer Oleg Bryjak is identified by an opera house in Dusseldorf as the first named victim of the plane crash.
Meanwhile, members of the Lower Chamber of Spain's parliament observed a minute's silence for the victims of the tragedy.
