MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. A tail section from the crashed AirAsia passenger jet, lifted off the seabed on Saturday, nearly two weeks after Flight QZ8501 went down in the Java Sea, was severely damaged, Eduard Chizhikov, the head of a Russian Emergencies Ministry operations group working in Indonesia and the ministry’s key military expert, said on Saturday.

“The tail section of the Airbus A320 is heavily deformed. Malaysian specialists are searching it further for the black box recorders,” Chizhikov said, noting that despite bad weather conditions Russian and Indonesian rescue teams had successfully completed a unique operation to bring the wreckage up from the bottom.

On December 28, the Airbus A320-200 disappeared from radar screens about 40 minutes after its departure from Indonesia to Singapore, presumably crashing in the area of Kalimantan (Borneo) Island. The jet was carrying 155 passengers and seven crewmembers.

On January 2, a Russian Emergencies Ministry team numbering over 70 rescuers arrived in Indonesia to take part in an international rescue and search operation.