Black box from crashed Ethiopian jet is found 150ft under the sea

LEBANON'S marine commandos yesterday recovered the black box of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, the Lebanese army said in a statement.

The Boeing 737 crashed on 25 January minutes after take-off from Beirut during a fierce thunderstorm. All 90 people on board died.

The Lebanese military added that eight more bodies were recovered yesterday, raising the number of bodies retrieved to 23.

Passenger jets carry two black boxes – a data flight recorder and a cockpit voice recorder. The two are usually located in the rear of a plane, the area most likely to survive a crash intact.

Transportation minister Ghazi Aridi told the local Al-Jadeed television network that the box recovered yesterday was the data flight recorder.

He had earlier said that the black box was located at a depth of 150 feet off the coast just south of Beirut airport.

"Now, the search is continuing for the second box," he said, referring to the cockpit voice recorder.

Video footage showed the orange-coloured box being placed in a container.

Analysing data stored in the black box is critical to determining the cause of the crash.

A senior Lebanese army officer said the black box was "carefully" pulled out and taken yesterday to a Lebanese naval base in Beirut.

The officer added that the black box would later be handed over to a technical committee investigating the crash. It includes Lebanese, Ethiopian and French investigators.