At least three Britons are believed to have been killed in the French Alps plane crash disaster, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said.
Announcing the figure, he said his heartfelt condolences went to the family and friends who had lost their lives.
The Britons are among 144 passengers and six crew who died when the Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
Mr Hammond’s announcement came moments after Germanwings and Lufthansa staff stood in silence in Cologne to honour the dead.
Meanwhile, investigators as well as ministers from various governments are at the crash scene in the Alps.
Yesterday the black box cockpit voice recorder, which will allow investigators to hear what conversations the pilots had during the last moments of the flight, was recovered.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said: “The black box is damaged and must be reconstituted in the coming hours in order to be useable.”
Among those travelling on the plane along with her baby was Marina Bandres, who came from Jaca in the Spanish Pyrenees and lived in Britain, Jaca mayor Victor Barrio said.
Ms Bandres, reportedly 37, had been attending a funeral in the area for a relative.
Mr Barrio said he did not know if Ms Bandres’s husband was on the flight with her and son Julian, who was seven or eight months old.
Also among the passengers were two German opera singers – Dusseldorf-born contralto Maria Radner and bass baritone Oleg Bryjak, who was born in Kazakhstan.
Also on the flight were 16 pupils, from Joseph Konig school in Haltern am See in western Germany who were flying home after a week-long exchange with students at a school near Barcelona.
Joseph Konig’s headmaster said today he was “shell-shocked and speechless”.
Investigators will be trying to work out why there was no distress call from the plane which went into a slow descent even though it was in a mountainous area.
Germanwings said the captain on board was experienced and had been with the airline and with its parent company Lufthansa for more than 10 years and had clocked up 6,000 flying hours on this Airbus model.
Germanwings said today that maintenance work on a flap covering the landing gear had been carried out on the plane but that it was a noise issue, there were no safety issues and the plane was cleared to fly 24 hours before taking off.