2 black boxes from Iran's crashed plane recovered

All 168 people aboard the Caspian Airlines aircraft bound for Yerevan, Armenia, on Wednesday were killed. The radio's report quoted chief investigator Ahmad Majidi as saying one of the two recovered boxes was damaged. It said the boxes — the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders — would likely be sent to the aircraft's Russian manufacturers for analysis.

The search for the third black box was continuing, Majidi said.

Bodies of the victims would be taken to Tehran later Thursday for identification, he added.

Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Iran's large ethnic Armenian community, as well as 11 members of Iran's national youth judo team. Five Armenian citizens were among the dead, Armenia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, along with two Georgians, including a staffer from the Caucasus nation's embassy in Yerevan.

Armenia on Thursday announced a one-day national state of mourning to mark the death of its citizens in the crash, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.

Reporting from Yerevan, the agency said flags would fly at half-mast on government buildings and Armenian embassies abroad. Local radio and TV have canceled entertainment programs in a show of respect, it said.

The crash was the latest in a string of air disasters in recent years that have highlighted Iran's difficulties in maintaining its aging fleet of planes.

Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating their 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall.

Witnesses said the plane's tail was on fire before it went down, plowing a deep, long trench into agricultural fields outside the village of Jannat Abad, and the aircraft was blasted to bits.

Flaming wreckage, body parts and personal items were strewn over a 200-yard (meter) area. Firefighters put out blazes from the crash, but smoke smoldered from the pit for hours after as emergency workers searched for data recorders and other clues to the cause.

Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old, was laying gas pipes in a house by the field when he saw the stricken jet overhead. He said the plane was circling in the air, flames shooting from its tail section.

"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake," Hashemi told The Associated Press by phone.

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