Germanwings victims: Spanish bride and groom perish in crash

Asmae Ouahhoud el Allaoui will be remembered in white lace and tulle.

A snapshot from her wedding Saturday shows the 23-year-old bride smiling nervously from under a white veil as her bow-tied groom slips a gold ring onto her finger.

Some 200 guests feted El Allaoui and her husband, 24-year-old Mohamed Tehrioui, at their wedding at a restaurant in La Llagosta, the Moroccan Spaniard bride’s hometown in northern Spain. The room was decorated in white lights. Tehrioui wore a white rose boutonniere.

Married just three days, the couple boarded a flight from nearby Barcelona on Tuesday to start a new life together in Germany.

They never made it.

The newlyweds were among 150 people killed when Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday. The plane’s co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, 27, is suspected of having deliberately crashed the aircraft, killing everyone on board. On Friday, prosecutors said they found a doctor’s note excusing Lubitz from work that day ripped into pieces inside his apartment.

A huge black ribbon adorned with El Allaoui’s name and photo hangs from the doorway of the school from which she graduated in La Llagosta, population about 14,000. Hundreds of mourners lit candles and laid flowers Wednesday at a vigil for her and another local victim, 42-year-old, Francisco Javier Goñalons.

Their fellow passengers included 16 German exchange students and two of their teachers, two opera singers and a U.S. government contractor on a European vacation with her daughter.

Spain observed three days of official mourning through Friday midnight, with flags flying at half-staff and church bells ringing across the country.

Among those who rushed to Barcelona’s El Prat airport for information, hours after the ill-fated flight took off from there Tuesday, were the parents of Spanish high schoolers who had just hosted the German exchange students in their homes. The airport set up a private room for mourners, outside which flowers and condolence messages were left by other travelers.

Sixteen-, 14- and 15-year-olds from the western German town of Haltern had spent a week with host families in the town of Llinars del Valles, about 35 miles from Barcelona in Spain’s Catalonia region. On Tuesday, the Catalan students hugged their counterparts goodbye, dropping them off at 6 a.m. at the town’s train station. Hours later, sitting in class, they learned that their new friends had died in the crash. Classes at both schools were suspended.

“For many families in Haltern, the world has stopped turning today,” the German town’s mayor, Bodo Klimpel, said at a news conference. “We stand speechless before a tragedy in which 18 young people -- 16 schoolgirls and boys from the 10th grade and their teachers — have not come back from their exchange program in Spain.”

Forty-three German exchange students from another town returned home this week by bus instead.

Mourners piled flowers on the sidewalk outside Barcelona’s Liceu opera house, where Maria Radner and Oleg Bryjak had just completed performing a run of Wagner’s “Siegfried.” Both were headed home to Germany when they died on the Germanwings flight. Radner, a contralto, died with her husband and baby. Bryjak was a bass baritone singer originally from Kazakhstan.

Among three American victims were Yvonne Selke, 58, a nearly 23-year employee of the U.S. contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and her daughter, Emily Selke, a 2013 graduate of Drexel University. The Selkes are from the Washington suburb of Nokesville, Va. The mother and daughter had been touring Europe together.

“Our entire family is deeply saddened by the losses of Yvonne and Emily Selke,” read a statement from the Selke family. “Two wonderful, caring, amazing people who meant so much to so many.”

The third American victim was identified as Robert Oliver Calvo, 37, who worked for the Spanish fashion retailer Desigual and lived in Barcelona.

Frayer is a special correspondent.