CHAPECO – Funeral honours got under way here Saturday in Brazil for the members of the Chapecoense soccer club who died in a plane crash in northwestern Colombia earlier last week.
Coffins draped with the club’s flag and containing the remains of 50 victims arrived in two military planes from Medellin, Colombia, starting at 9:30 am and were received with military honors amid a heavy downpour at the Serafin Enoss Bertaso airport in this southern city.
Brazilian President Michel Temer was on hand to pay tribute to the victims.

Some 100,000 people, according to the team’s estimates, have gathered inside and outside the team’s Arena Conda stadium to pay their final respects to the victims, who are due to arrive there via a funeral cortege.
Chapecoense players, executives, coaches and other staff, along with special guests, journalists and a crew of nine, were on board a charter flight operated by Bolivia’s Lamia airlines that departed Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and crashed in the mountains Monday night before it could reach Medellin’s airport.

The pilot had been given priority to land after frantically alerting the control tower that the plane was running dangerously low on fuel, but he did not have enough time to get to the runway.
Chapecoense, a club based in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, was traveling to Medellin to play in the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional.
The Brazilian victims of the plane crash included 19 Chapecoense players, 25 executives, coaches and special guests of the club and a score of journalists.

The bodies of many of the media professionals who died in the crash were transported Saturday to their respective home cities for burial.