'PARIS — A German jetliner on a routine flight to Düsseldorf from Barcelona, Spain, rapidly lost altitude for more than eight minutes and then crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday morning with 144 passengers and six crew members onboard, the airline said.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France said that no one on the plane had survived the crash.

Search and rescue teams scrambled in the afternoon to get to the site, in a remote and rugged part of the Alpes de Haute-Provence region of southeastern France that President François Hollande said at a news conference would be very difficult to reach. The French Interior Ministry said that more than 400 police officers and rescue personnel had been dispatched to the area.' -By NICOLA CLARK and DAN BILEFSKY

Read more at New York Times