Victims of Iranian plane crash beyond recognition

"There is not a single piece which can be identified. There is not a single finger of anybody left," an emergency worker at the site said, adding that all he found were "pieces of flesh and bone."

Officials believe identifying the victims will be a lengthy process. The remains have been sent to a coroner's office in Tehran, said Mohammad Ali Ahani, a local rescue team leader.

The Russian-made Tupolev plane was en route from Tehran to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, on Wednesday when it crashed soon after takeoff on a farm in the northern Iranian Qazvin province.

The crash, believed to have been caused by a fire in one of the engines, led to an explosion and the pieces of the aircraft were scattered over an area of 200 square meters. No one on the ground was injured.

Rescuers have recovered two of three flight data recorders from the plane, although they were severely damaged in the crash and ensuing blaze.

"If efforts to retrieve data from the boxes fail, they will be sent back to the country that produced them so that they can be repaired in order to find the reason behind the crash," Press TV quoted an Iranian transport ministry official, Ahmad Majidi, as saying, Kazinform refers to RIA Novosti.

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