国际英语新闻：Crashed Ethiopian airliner's black boxes located off Lebanon

BEIRUT, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- A search team late Wednesday located the black boxes of the Ethiopian airliner that crashed off the Lebanese coast on Monday morning, the Lebanese army said in a statement on Thursday.

The statement said that the black boxes were located 8 km off the shore and 1,300 meters below the sea level. An American ship Ocean Alert will retrieve the black boxes from the deep sea on Thursday, added the statement.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday that the crew of the USS Ramage, which is operating with the Lebanese and international navies searching for the downed Ethiopian airliner, have picked up signals from the black box that belongs to the aircraft.

Later the Ocean Alert surveyed the location of the black boxes. The news media will be informed about any new development concerning this matter, the statement said.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET409, a Boeing 737-800 bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean four minutes after takeoff from Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport at around 2: 40 a.m. (0040 GMT) early Monday morning in a thunderstorm.

The flight had 90 passengers on board. As of the press time, no survivors have been found, while five Ethiopians and six Lebanese have been identified among the 14 bodies at the Rafik Hariri University Hospital.

Although the search teams have found some wreckage, the fuselage of the crashed plane is still missing.