Madrid: The Spanish government said on Wednesday it was hunting for the authors of malicious jokes on Twitter about the victims of the air crash in the French Alps.

“If they were all Germans and Catalans, what is the tragedy?” wrote one user, flagging the Tweet with the hashtag #Germanwings.

“It is not the first time the social networks are used for hate speech,” which is punishable under Spain’s penal code, said junior security minister Francisco Martinez.

“The interior ministry has ordered an investigation to establish possible criminal responsibility for messages posted on social networks,” he told a news conference.

“As well as expressing tremendous cruelty, they may constitute crimes which will have to be investigated and referred to the justice system.”

Many of the messages appeared to target Catalans, inhabitants of the culturally distinct Catalonia region and regular targets for teasing in the rest of Spain.

The plane took off from Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, before it crashed in southeastern France on Tuesday with the deaths of all 150 people on board.

Spain’s interior ministry launched a crackdown on online hate speech in May 2014 after the killing of a ruling party politician sparked many insults online against conservative politicians.

Candles, tears as Germany mourns 16 teens killed in air crash

A sea of lit candles and flowers covered the front steps of a German school that was deep in mourning on Wednesday after 16 of its students died in the plane disaster in the French Alps.

Bereaved students wept and hugged each other near the makeshift memorial of candles, some arranged in heart shapes, to share the pain of losing their friends in the icy alpine wasteland on Tuesday.

“Yesterday we were many, today we are alone,” read a hand-painted sign at the school, decorated with 16 crosses — one for each of the victims, most of whom were around 15 years old.

The teenagers were among at least 72 Germans who made up nearly half the disaster’s total death toll of 150.

The students and their two female teachers had been on a weeklong exchange trip near Barcelona, paying a reciprocal visit after Spanish students came in December to the northwestern town of Haltern.

“Life dreams were shattered from one minute to the next,” an ashen-faced headmaster Ulrich Wessel, said on television, characterising the faculty and students as one school “family”.

He said the students’ deaths left “a wound that will heal very slowly and leave deep scars”.

Across Germany flags were to fly at half-mast for three days.

Three generations of a family die in plane crash

Three generations of one family — a schoolgirl, her mother and grandmother — were on the Germanwings plane that crashed, according to a town outside Barcelona.

A statement from Sant Cugat del Valles town hall didn’t provide their names.

The girl was a student of a middle school for children aged 10 to 11 at Santa Isabel school in Sant Cugat.

“The students are very affected. The teachers are trying to help them any way they can,” said a woman who answered the phone at the school. She refused to give her name or comment further.

Swedish soccer team narrowly escaped flying on Germanwings

The players of Swedish soccer team Dalkurd narrowly escaped boarding the budget airline Germanwings’ A320 that crashed in the French Alps killing all 150 people on board.

The team had considered four possible routes, one of which was on Germanwings flight 4U 9525, to take their players and staff home to Stockholm from a training camp in Barcelona.

The team ended up flying groups home on three separate flights, rejecting the Germanwings option because of the long wait for a connection in Duesseldorf.

“We really should have flown with that plane,” Dalkurd sporting director Adil Kizil told the Sportbladet newspaper, as it was their first choice but the wait had changed their minds.

“Before we booked we looked at that flight that was going to Duesseldorf but there was such a long wait for the connection to Arlanda (Stockholm) that we chose to fly in three different groups instead.” Kizil said that the players at the third-tier club from the Swedish town of Borlange were very shaken when they realised how close they had come to meeting the fate that Manchester United (1958) and the Zambia (1993) national team had in the past.

“All the people there were at the same check-in desk as us at the same time. You could say we had a little luck today. What has happened is very, very tragic.” Germanwings is the budget airline of Germany’s Lufthansa. (Editing by Ken Ferris)

— Agencies