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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Distraught families on Thursday underwent the grim ordeal of identifying the remains of 75 people killed after a Turkish Airlines jetliner crashed short of a fog-shrouded runway in southeastern Turkey.

Relatives waited outside several mortuaries in freezing temperatures and bickered with officials overnight to claim their loved ones -- many burnt almost beyond recognition. Officials said about 30 bodies had been released to families by Thursday lunchtime.

Five survivors aboard the flight from Istanbul were taken to hospital after the plane came down on Wednesday in the military section of the airport in Diyarbakir, near the Iraqi border. Four Britons were killed in the crash, the British Embassy said. An American was aboard the flight, U.S. officials said, but the American's condition was not clear.

Investigators on Thursday were examining the two flight recorders recovered from the scene. They were focusing on fog as the main reason why the Turkish Airlines RJ 100 jet came down just short of the military runway.

CNN's Jane Arraf said the investigation would also look at why the airport had no up-to-date instrument landing system. (Full story)

Meanwhile two Turkish F-4 fighter jets collided on Thursday morning in heavy fog during a training flight in the same region of southeastern Turkey. The pilots and navigators parachuted from the jets, but media reports said they had all died.

Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, who was visiting the scene of the passenger jet crash on Thursday, said the military dismissed sabotage as a cause. "Most probably it was bad weather conditions," he said. Heavy fog has been a problem in the area in recent days and flights from Diyarbakir were cancelled earlier this week.

The RJ 100 was carrying 75 passengers and five crew members on a flight directly from Istanbul to Diyarbakir when it crashed at 8:28 p.m.(1828 GMT) on Wednesday, just two minutes before its scheduled landing.

Hundreds of relatives gathered at Istanbul Airport on Thursday hoping to fly to Diyarbakir but they were delayed by the fog, alonside transport officials on their way to investigate the crash.

One of the five survivors described how she was thrown clear of the wreckage and landed in a bale of hay.

"I'll never board a plane again for the rest of my life," passenger Aliye Il, who escaped after being thrown into a hay bale, told the Anatolian news agency. "I still haven't overcome the shock." (Survivors' stories)

Turkish Airlines officials said on Thursday nine of the dead were foreign nationals, including four non-Turks of Arab origin.

A two-year-old Turkish girl was among those pulled from the wreckage. She underwent emergency surgery at a local hospital to try to save her, but was declared brain dead following the operation. She was one of three small children who died.

The survivors were named as Aliye Il, Celal Toprak, Murat Karamutlu, Abdullah Altindag and Gencel Gunes, who were all taken to hospital with injuries ranging from burns to broken bones.

The four-engine British Aerospace RJ 100 jet, commonly used for internal flights in Turkey, struck the ground 40 yards short of the runway.

The city's soccer club, Diyarbakirspor, had made reservations for the flight but the travel arrangements were rescheduled, team official Umit Kayahan told CNN-Turk television.

Turkish Airlines has suffered a number of crashes over the years. Its most recent crash was April 1999 when a Boeing 737, empty but for six crew members, went down in southern Turkey, killing everyone inside. Another crash in southeastern Turkey in 1994 killed 57 people when the plane hit a hill during its fourth attempt to land.

The airline's worst accident occurred in March 1974, when all 346 people aboard a DC-10 were killed in one of aviation's deadliest crashes ever. In that accident, the Turkish Airlines plane experienced sudden decompression shortly after takeoff in Paris and then slammed into a park in Ermenonville, France. An unsecured cargo door was blamed.

Source: CNN