MADRID − Nineteen families of soldiers killed in Spain’s worst peacetime aircraft accident were still waiting to see if DNA evidence showed the government had erred in identifying the bodies of their loved ones, it emerged Tuesday.

Sixty-two soldiers on a peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan died when a Yak-42 plane they were travelling in back to Spain crashed in Turkey in May last year.

The tragedy has provoked claims that Nato had rented old, unsafe aircraft to transport soldiers.

The Spanish government threatened to sue Nato over the controversy.

But the representatives of the former government were also forced to apologise to the relatives when it was revealed that bodies had been incorrectly identified at the crash scene.

Most of those that died were given State funerals in Spain, but at least 22 were wrongly identified.

Relatives called for the resignation of former defence minister Federico Trillo as an MP, who was forced to apologise over the mix-up to the relatives in the Spanish Parliament.

Carlos Ripollés, spokesman of the Association of Families of the Yak-42 Catastrophe, said Tuesday another 23 families had asked for new DNA tests to be carried out on the bodies of their relatives.

Of these, 19 were still waiting to find out if the bodies had been mixed-up.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news