Another victim of the Madrid air disaster died of her injuries, raising the death toll to 154 on Saturday, amid growing anger among families of the victims over the delay identifying their loved ones.

Maria Luisa Estevez Gonzalez (31), passed away at Madrid's La Paz hospital where she was being treated for burns to 72 percent of her body, Madrid's health services said in a statement.

She had been one of the most badly injured of the 19 people who survived the fiery crash on Wednesday of the Canary Islands-bound Spanair flight at Madrid's Barajas airport just seconds into its second takeoff attempt.

Two of the injured remain in "very serious" condition, the statement added.

The authorities have so far been able to identify just 53 of those killed in the crash, Spain's worst aviation accident in 25 years, through their fingerprints, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.

Most of the rest will have to be identified using DNA techniques as they were burned beyond recognition.

"By tomorrow" (Sunday) most of the process should be completed, largely through DNA testing of the bodies, which were badly burned, he told reporters after visiting the injured in hospital.

Difficult cases

But police officers handling the task had come across some "particularly difficult" cases, Rubalcaba said.

One had involved an adopted child, where DNA samples from his biological parents were needed to complete the task.

Video images held by the civil aviation authority, AENA, showed that the US-made MD-82 twin-engine jet crashed and burst into flames moments after taking off on Wednesday.

Witnesses had been quoted as saying the left engine caught fire after the plane left the runway, but authorities have never confirmed this.

"The plane managed to takeoff, then it started to sway from side to side, until it fell," one of the survivors, Ligia Palomino, told AFP by telephone from the hospital.

Dozens of family and friends of the victims — about half of them from the Canary Islands — met with Spanair directors on Saturday for the second day in a row.

Anger over the slow identification process and what they said was a lack of information from authorities as to the cause of the accident boiled over during a two-hour meeting late Friday with executives of Spanair.

Officials are evasive

Victoria Esteban, who lost her seven-year-old niece in the crash, said airline officials did not have answers to most of the questions that were put to them at the meeting.

"We would have gotten the same information had it been a janitor speaking to us," she told news radio Cadena Ser.

The regional government of the Canary Islands announced Saturday that it would hold an official memorial for the victims of the accident on August 30.

The archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco, will preside over a memorial service for all of the victims of the crash on 1 September in the Almudena Cathedral.

Spanair has said that an air intake valve was repaired just before takeoff, but experts said that fault was not to blame for the accident and that a combination of as yet unknown faults caused the disaster.

The head of the investigation team, Emilio Valerio, said the results of the probe would be known in about a month.

The Spanish government has vowed a full investigation into the crash of the MD-82 plane, the country's worst aviation accident in 25 years.

"We owe this to the victims and passengers. The MD is a type of plane which is flying at the moment and as such it is of interest to global aviation to know exactly what happened," said Rubalcaba.

Spanair, Spain's second largest airline, is owned by Scandinavian carrier SAS. It posted a net loss during the first half of 2008.

AFP