The black boxes from an Iranian airliner that crashed in flames near Tehran, killing all 168 people on board, have been found, a transport ministry official said today.
"The plane's recording and flight systems have been found," Ahmad Majidi, head of the ministry's crisis unit, told the official IRNA news agency. "Our experts are examining the black boxes to try to determine the cause of the crash."
The Caspian Airlines Tupolev-154 caught fire in mid-air en route to Armenia and plunged into farmland on yesterday, killing all 153 passengers and 15 crew in the worst air disaster in sanctions-hit Iran in years.
Witnesses said the plane was ablaze before smashing into the ground and exploding near a village near the northwestern city of Qazvin shortly after take-off from Tehran.
Television images showed a vast smoking crater at the disaster site littered with debris of plane parts, shoes and clothes.
One relief worker told an AFP reporter at the site that all he found were "pieces of flesh and bones."
"There is not a single piece which can be identified. There is not a single finger of anybody left," he said, standing next to a body bag filled with pieces of flesh.
In Yerevan, the deputy head of the Armenian civil aviation organisation, Arsen Pogossian, said the pilot had attempted an emergency landing after an engine caught fire.