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Yemen plane's black box located

Other News Materials 1 July 2009 12:37 (UTC +04:00)

One of the black box flight recorders from the Yemeni plane which crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday has been located, a French official has said, reported BBC.

Efforts to retrieve the recorder will begin during the day, the official added, quoted by AFP news agency.

The plane came down in bad weather with 153 people on board. Only one survivor, a 14-year-old girl, has been found.

There were 66 French nationals on board the plane, which was flying from the Yemeni capital Sanaa to the Comoros.

Most of the plane's passengers had flown on a different Yemenia aircraft from Paris or Marseille before boarding flight IY626 in Sanaa.

"The black box's signal was located yesterday [Tuesday] at 1630 local time (1230 GMT) by an aerial patrol, 40 km [25 miles] from Grande Comore," a spokeswoman for Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said.

A French vessel has been sent to the site to start recovery operations, she added.

The French transport ministry had earlier said the Airbus 310 plane had been banned from France because of "irregularities".

The crash was the second involving an Airbus aircraft in recent weeks. On 1 June an Air France Airbus 330 travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board.

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