Dubai, Dec 25: Thirty five bodies were on Tuesday recovered from the debris of the ill-fated Ukrainian Antonov aircraft which crashed onto a mountain side late Monday night in Iran killing all 50 passengers on board. The blackbox of the An-140 twin-engine aircraft carrying 44 passengers and six crew members, have also been found on the mountains of Baqerabad village among the debris which was strewn over a one kilometre radius from the crash site, Governor of Ardestan where the relief operations are on, said.
Most of the passengers of the plane which took off from Khariv in Ukraine and crashed minutes before landing in Isfahan, were senior aeronautics engineers and executives of the Antonov company on a visit to a new factory producing a locally made version of the same flight. The search operations, which is led by two Iranian helicopters over the mountainous terrain where the Antonov crashed is still underway to find the remaining bodies, Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted the Governor as saying. A Government commission has been set up to investigate into the matter. Bureau Report