An Israeli man may have been aboard the Germanwings plane that crashed over the French Alps. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Germanwings airline—an offshoot of the German carrier Lufthansa— announced Tuesday that its flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed over the French Alps, with few likely survivors. The Israeli Foreign Ministry subsequently said that there is a strong possibility that an Israeli citizen was among the 150 passengers on that flight.

The ministry said it received a phone call from the citizen’s family, who said that he was scheduled to be on the crashed flight. His actual presence on the plane has yet to be confirmed. Meanwhile, Germany is awaiting final confirmation on whether or not an entire class of 16 students who were traveling home from a school trip were killed in the crash.

“We saw an aircraft that had literally been ripped apart, the bodies are in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage,” the prosecutor for the French city of Marseille, Bruce Robin, told Reuters.

Although one of the plane’s black box recorders has been discovered, regional police chief David Galtier said, “We are still searching. It’s unlikely any bodies will be airlifted until Wednesday.”