Local Editor, 8-2-2010

Search teams have retrieved flight recorders belonging to the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed in the Lebanese waters last month, killing all 90 people aboard.

Passenger jets carry two recorders, a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, commonly referred to as "black boxes."

Only hours after Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi announced the retrieval of the passenger jet's flight data recorder, an army official told Reuters that the voice recorder had also been found.

Aridi also said on Sunday that navy commandos had also located the fuselage of the plane, where most of the bodies are believed to be trapped.

The boxes were taken to Beirut's naval base and handed to the investigators of the crash, which in their turn headed with the boxes to France.

The jet's black box and the investigation committee arrived in Paris Monday morning.

As for the victims' bodies, ten bodies have been recovered, bringing to 25 the number of victims found so far.

Search is still underway for 67 bodies that remain missing.

The Boeing 737, which was en route to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, caught fire and crashed on January 25, minutes after take-off from Beirut International Airport during a fierce thunderstorm.

According to sources, search operations continue as Lebanese army divers will retrieve more bodies from the sea off Naameh.