All 13 air warriors on board dead in AN-32 crash: IAF
All 13 air-warriors on board an AN-32 transport aircraft that crashed in a heavily forested mountainous area in Arunachal Pradesh 10 days back were killed, the Indian Air Force said Thursday.
Official sources said the "black box" of the aircraft has been recovered from the crash site and it will help the investigators reconstruct the events leading to the crash.
The IAF has already ordered a court of inquiry into the accident, one of the worst involving a military aircraft in recent years.
The Russian-origin aircraft went missing on the afternoon of June 3, around 33 minutes after taking off from Jorhat in Assam for Menchuka in Arunachal Pradesh.
After eight days of a massive search operation, the wreckage of the plane was spotted by an IAF chopper on Tuesday at a height of 12,000 ft near Gatte village on the border of Siang and Shi-Yomi districts.
"On 13 Jun 19, eight members of the rescue team reached the crash site in search of the survivors. Unfortunately no air-warrior survived ..