„At 11.30, I heard a series of loud noises in the air. There are often fighter jets flying over, so I thought it sounded just like that. I looked outside, but I couldn‘t see any fighter planes,“ he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. „The noise I heard was long – like 8 seconds – as if the plane was going more slowly than a military plane. There was another long noise after about 30 seconds.“ (…)

A woman living in Verlet three kilometres from the crash said: “I heard a dull noise, like an avalanche starting or like the explosions they use to force avalanches. Then several fighter planes flew over the village, probably looking for the wreckage.”