BBC Latest UPDATES: Germanwings flight crashes in France

Students have attended mass in Llinars del Valles, the Spanish town where a group of German teenagers on board the Germanwings flight had been visiting as part of an exchange programme.

Two Australians – a woman and her adult son – were on board the Germanwings flight, the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims of this shocking tragedy,” she said, adding it would be inappropriate to give further details at the present time.

A rescue official says about 10 police officers will spend the night at the crash site to guard it. Lt Col Jean-Marc Meninchini of the regional police rescue service said search operations will resume at daybreak. He said the recovery operation is expected to last a week.

Books of condolence are ready to sign at a sports hall in the south-eastern French village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has become the hub for all the rescue teams and accident investigators.

Stephane Duclet, a journalist with French newspaper La Provence, has flown over the crash site.

“From what we were able to see, we had great difficulty in actually locating the plane because very little of it remained. Looking from above, not even the fuselage was intact. All we could make out was small parts.”

Earlier, an opera house in Duesseldorf said bass baritone Oleg Bryjak was on the plane. Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu said Maria Radner, like Mr Bryjak, had performed in its production of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried.

Here are a pictures from video taken by news agency AFP, showing the crash site and search and rescue teams:

The search has been called off for this evening and will resume “at first light” says Pierre-Henri Brandet, spokesman for the French interior ministry in Seyne-les-Alpes.

A Spanish opera house says a second singer, German contralto Maria Radner along with her husband and baby, were among the 150 passengers feared dead.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says the crash site is “a picture of horror”. After being flown over the area and briefed by French authorities, he said: “The grief of the families and friends is immeasurable. We must now stand together.

“We are united in our great grief.”

Germany’s national football team will play with black armbands when it takes on Australia in a friendly on Wednesday. There will also be a minute’s silence before kick-off.

Speaking before a joint press conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the White House, President Obama said “our thoughts and our prayers are with our friends in Europe”.

“It’s particularly heartbreaking because it apparently includes the loss of so many children, some of them infants,” he said.

American officials are working to confirm how many US citizens may have been on board, he added.

Sixteen German teenagers and two teachers were among the passengers. The group, from Joseph-Koenig school in Haltern, western Germany, were returning from a Spanish exchange programme.

Until today, Germanwings had recorded no accidents involving fatalities since it was founded in 2002, Associated Press reports.

Germany’s Spiegel magazine has reported an incident from 2010, when two pilots nearly passed out as they landed in Cologne. The magazine said contaminated cabin air was suspected.