29 December 2016•Update: 29 December 2016
By Diyar Guldogan
ANKARA
Tape from the third black box from the Russian plane which went down into the Black Sea on Sunday was found Thursday, a law enforcement source has said.
"Tape was found from the third black box, indicating that it was destroyed," the anonymous source was quoted as saying by the country’s official TASS news agency.
The source said the tape from the third recorder of the Tu-154 plane was found in the tail section of the submerged aircraft.
It said the tape was "seriously" deformed but was still decipherable.
The other two flight recorders were "satisfactory" and their decoding will be completed "soon" in Moscow, the source added.
Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said at a news conference that they completed the "main phase" of the search operation, adding the search was not "over".
Sokolov said a total of 19 bodies were retrieved from the Black Sea. About 2,000 small pieces of the plane have been found, he added.
He said the cause of the crash will be revealed following the decoding of black boxes and examination of the pieces of the plane.
The aircraft was en route to Syria’s Latakia to take part in a New Year's concert when it disappeared from radar after taking off from Sochi.
In addition to 64 members of the Red Army Choir or Alexandrov Ensemble, the crash’s 92 victims include eight crew members, nine journalists, eight soldiers, two Defense Ministry officials, and one member of an NGO.
