Ananova:

There wasn't much to find for the rescuers who laboured to bring out the first bodies from the melted remains of the ill-fated Kitzsteinhorn cable car.

Remains of most of the victims were unrecognisable to all but the most trained expert.

Chief pathologist Edith Tutsch-Bauer says that most bodies lacked "distinguishing facial features," such as chins and noses. Tattoos and scars were no longer possible to see in heavily scarred skin. Ski suits were burned away.

Twenty-nine victims were recovered by this morning, two days after the cable-pulled car on rails caught fire inside the Kitzsteinhorn mountain in the Austrian Alps, killing at least 159 people. They were being flown to the provincial capital, Salzburg, for a slow and painstaking DNA identification.

Relatives were bringing in tooth brushes and razors used by suspected victims to help provide tissue.

Salvage workers were initially able to recover only the bodies of those who had tried to escape from the train uphill, but were felled on the tunnel's steep steps by draft-fed acrid billows of toxic smoke rushing through the tunnel.

"The destruction in the lower cable car is enormous," said Major Franz Lang, the police chief investigator, as he detailed the damage from the blaze's origin. The floor of the car had melted, he said, complicating the grim task of recovering the bodies in the cold, dark tunnel.

Because of the high heat, the victims remains apparently had melted together with the wreck of the car, Maj. Lang suggested, adding: "We have to cut out, to dissect, each victim."

Due to the grimness of the scene at the site of the tragedy, rescuers were working only for around 90 minutes at a time. Medical and psychiatric personnel were posted at the cable car tunnel's middle entrance to provide any necessary counselling for those unable to deal with the horrors inside the tunnel.

Ms Tutsch-Bauer also warned against expectations that the victims will be identified quickly.

"I expect it will take three to four weeks," she said.