Black Boxes From Iran's Crashed Plane Recovered

Investigators have recovered the three black boxes belonging to a Russian-made jetliner that crashed in northwest Iran shortly after taking off from the capital, killing all 168 on board, authorities said Thursday.

Remains of the dead — many badly burned and damaged — were brought to Tehran for identification, as relatives from Armenia, the passenger jet's destination, headed for Iran to retrieve their loved ones' bodies.

Khristofor Sogomonian, whose father was among those killed, said he would "try to find anything and to commit his body to the soil."

Diana Sarkisian told The Associated Press at the airport in Armenia's capital Yerevan, that her cousin was aboard the plane as the first leg of a trip to her husband in the United States. "I had hoped that she was alive, but now all doubts have fallen away," said Sarkisian, an Iranian national.

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The black boxes — containing the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders — will be key to determining the cause of the crash, which remains unknown. Witnesses said the plane's tail, where the engines are located, was on fire before it went down nose first, plowing a long trench into agricultural fields outside the village of Jannat Abad, and the plane was blasted to bits. Parts of the trench were up to four meters (yards) deep.

Chief investigator Ahmad Majidi said one of the recovered boxes was damaged, state radio said. The boxes would likely be sent to the aircraft's Russian manufacturers for analysis, he said.

A team of Russian air accident experts was due to arrive in Iran on Friday to help in the investigation of the latest crash, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told the semi-official news agency ISNA.

Majidi initially said two black boxes were found and that investigators were searching for a third. Later state TV reported that the third was found, some 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) away from the crash. Black boxes, built to survive crashes and intense fires, record a plane's performance, like speed and altitude, as well as communications between the cockpit crew or with air traffic controllers.