The first remains of the victims of the Boeing 737 plane crash in China have been found, along with one of the jet's black boxes.
On Monday, a passenger plane carrying more than 130 people crashed into the mountains of China's rural Guangxi region after plunging more than 20,000ft. It later emerged that there were no survivors.
Now, as reported by The Guardian, the recovery mission has found the first human remains at the crash site.
Over 300 rescue workers are still searching the crash site in a remote area near Wuzhou in Teng County, Guangxi province. The search had been paused briefly on Wednesday due to poor weather conditions, but it was revealed in a later briefing that some human remains had been found.
One of the black boxes recovered was said to be "badly damaged". The aircraft's other black box, which records flight data, is yet to be discovered, NBC News reports.
According to Zhu Tao, an official at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), the storage units of the recovered black box had sustained damage but was "relatively complete" and was sent to a Beijing institute to be decoded.
Some personal details about the deceased passengers have been reported in Chinese state media. Speaking to a news outlet in China, a man who used the pseudonym Wang Baiyang shared that his 26-year-old sister, her husband and their infant daughter were aboard the plane and that it was actually their very first flight.
They were traveling to Guangazhou with the hope of seeking medical treatment for their child and had originally been set to leave on an earlier flight which was cancelled.
"For the past two days, I felt like I had a dream, and I always felt that when I woke up the next day, my sister would call me," he said, per The Guardian. "I didn’t think it was real at all, first my grandfather died, and then I heard the news of the flight, and I just froze there and tried to reach my sister through the phone."
"Who would have thought that just after they found a doctor who can cure the child’s disease, this disease will not have to be treated," said Wang. "Life-saving flights become fatal flights. It was their first and last flight."
Our thoughts continue to go out to all of those affected by this devastating tragedy...
