British resident, politician's wife and two celebrity opera singers were on board flight 4U 9525

Contralto Maria Radner,34, was travelling with her husband and baby, and Baritone Oleg Bryjak, 54, originally from Kazakhstan, both part of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein had been performing Siegfried in Spain's second city and were returning home to Düsseldorf.

A British resident, Marina Bandres, 37, originally from Aragón and her seven-month-old son Julián, are among the deceased.

Germanwings cancelled seven flights last night and is expected to cancel up to 30 more today after crew members refused to fly, saying they were too badly affected by the news of the crash and the deaths of six of their colleagues.

Teenagers in the Barcelona town of Llinars del Vallès are distraught to learn 16 German exchange pupils from the Joseph König Gymnasium high school in Haltern, who had been staying with them for the past week, have been reported dead .

Another 35 exchange students of the same age from Hamburg, also staying in the town, were due to fly home this morning and were said to be terrified.

One of the girls fainted when she heard about the crash, at the thought that she would be on the very same route the following day.

The victims confirmed so far include two Australians – Carol Friday, 68 and her son Greig, 29, from Melbourne – two Colombians identified as María del Pilar Tejada and Luis Eduardo Medrano Aragón, two Japanese nationals, two Argentinians and three who may be Mexican.

Two employees from Barcelona's trade fair company, the Fira de Barcelona were on their way to the Anuga FoodTec 2015 fair due to open in Cologne, 50 kilometres from Düsseldorf where the plane was headed, were among the passengers.

Josep Sabaté Casellas, who used to work for the high-street clothing empire Inditex and was now working for the fashion brand Esprit, leaves behind three children and a wife pregnant with his fourth child in A Coruña, Galicia.

Two employees from the Catalunya branch of Delphi – a union representative and the HR manager Rogelio Oficialdegui Tina – in Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona province) have also perished in the crash.

Left Republic of Catalunya (ERC)'s leader Oriol Junqueras says Ariadna Faguera, the 33-year-old wife of his political office manager was on board, also heading for the Aluga FoodTec fair with another woman, aged 42.

A woman and a man working for the streetwear chain Desigual, en route to Germany to hunt out locations for new shops, and four employees from the firm Nutrisport based in Argentona (Barcelona), three of whom live in nearby Mataró, are among the dead.

A man from Lorca (Murcia), the town devastated by an earthquake in May 2011 and another man from nearby Águilas were on board, according to their family members who checked their boarding pass details against those of the Germanwings flight.

Eight people from the province of Girona – six who worked in food and motor mechanics firms in Banyoles, Cornellà de Terri and Girona city and who were on their way to the Anuga FoodTec are confirmed as having been passengers.

Multinational chemical firm Bayer confirms that at least one of its employees from the Barcelona branch, along with the staff member's wife was on board.

A Belgian national living in Barcelona, three female employees of the Mexican chemical firm Itram Higiene in Vic (Barcelona) including the company's export consultant, a pupil from the Santa Isabel primary school in Sant Cugat del Vallès and her mother and grandmother were said to have been travelling on the Barcelona-Düsseldorf plane.

A woman from Meliana (Valencia), Pilar Vicente, 55 was on her way to Düsseldorf to see her children who were on their Erasmus scholarship year out from university, says the mayor of Bonrepòs i Mirambell (Valencia), who confirmed Pilar had been a teacher in the village for 25 years and now lived in Barcelona after moving there with her husband, a Bayer employee.

Another woman from the Valencia region, 40-year-old Estela Miguel Vázquez from Torrent, whose dad Sandalio Miguel Miquel is a famous architect in the town, was on the ill-fated airline.

She was a translator and interpreter who had been living in Basel, Switzerland for work reasons for two years.

Initial reports said a 60-year-old man from Valencia was on the flight, but it has later transpired Víctor is from Barcelona and that his partner, Ana, works in a high school in the city.

A newlywed Moroccan couple living in La Llagosta (Barcelona) were on their way to start a new life in Düsseldorf, but died two days after getting married.

Others identified to date include Israeli national Eyal Baum, living in Spain and travelling to Germany for work reasons, a 20-year-old girl from Deurne, in the Netherlands, and Marina Bandres, 37, from Jaca (Huesca province, Aragón) with her seven-month-old son Julián, who had been dropped off at Barcelona airport by Marina's father after travelling to the Pyrénéen province for a funeral.

Marina is said to have lived in the UK, but it is not known whether her husband was also on the flight.

The craft, an Airbus A320, began to lose altitude just one minute after reaching its cruising height of 38,000 feet, and went down at a rate of 4,000 feet a minute in an eight-minute descent.

This would have been too slow for a plane which had exploded in mid-air, too fast for a craft gliding due to a mid-air stall or total engine failure, and was about the same speed as an airliner heading for a runway, say experts.

No 'mayday' call was made by the pilot, but the last words before the crash at 10.53hrs heard from the control tower in Marseille, southern France were 'urgence, urgence' – air-traffic control had lost contact with the flight, which had been seen at an altitude of 5,000 feet, dangerously low for the mountains it was crossing.

Rescue operations resumed this morning at first light near the c