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Black box of crashed Gulf Air plane recovered
Rescue workers have recovered the `black box` flight data recorder from the Gulf Air airbus which crashed into the sea off Bahrain with 143 people aboard, a Bahraini government official announced on Thursday.
The bodies of all but one of the passengers and crew aboard the airbus A320 that crashed on Wednesday have been found.
Witnesses who watched a Gulf Air airbus 320 plane plunged into the sea near Bahrain and said that they heard an explosion and saw a flash of light come from one of the jet`s engines before the airliner fell from the sky.
``The plane circled twice around the airport and during the second round there was an explosion and then it fell into the
sea,`` One witness at the Gulf Arab state`s airport told Bahrain
television.
The plane, on a flight from Cairo to Bahrain, had 143 people
on board, including eight crew members. Most of the passengers
were Arab nationals.
Rescue workers have so far recovered 137 bodies from the
crash site.
The plane crashed in shallow waters off Bahrain and the Gulf
Arab state`s television station said that it fell into the sea after
an engine caught fire.
A Bahraini civil aviation official said on Thursday that the
country would ask US investigators to help with a probe into
the crash.
``Bahrain will ask the US National Transportation Safety Board to take part in the investigation,`` Ibrahim Abdullah Al-Hammar, Transport Ministry Undersecretary For Civil Aviation,
told a news conference at Bahrain airport.
Bureau Report