MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. Divers have recovered the second engine of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Tu-154 plane crashed into the Black Sea, a source in the search operation headquarters told TASS.
"The second engine has been retrieved. It has been slightly damaged but it appears to be in good condition," the source said.
Meanwhile, rescue workers form the Republic of Abkhazia continue to search for the crashed plane’s fragments, Abkhazia’s First Deputy Emergencies Minister Tigran Delibaltyan told TASS on Tuesday.
"We have been scouring the coastline and searching the water area using motor boats but the search produced no results so we decided to use helicopters on Wednesday," he said.
According to Delibaltyan, the rescue workers plan to use a Mil Mi-2 civil helicopter and a Mil Mi-8 helicopter of the Defense Ministry.
Abkhazia has been taking part in the search operation form the beginning since it was assumed that some of the victims’ bodies and fragments of the plane could have been carried beyond Russia’s borders by the stream.
The plane crashed in the early morning hours of December 25 shortly after taking off from the Black Sea resort of Sochi. There were 92 people on board the aircraft, including eight crew members and 84 passengers that lost their lives in the plane disaster. Among those on the fatal flight were members of the world-renowned Alexandrov Ensemble, an official army choir of the Russian Armed Forces, charity activist, Elizaveta Glinka, better known to the Russian public as Dr. Liza, as well as military servicemen and nine reporters. The Alexandrov Ensemble was on its way to celebrate New Year’s Eve with Russia’s Aerospace Forces at the Hmeymim air base in Syria.