* Five-member French team joins CAA, PAF officials in plane crash investigation

* 95 victims identified

ISLAMABAD: Investigators cut through the debris of the crashed Airblue aircraft in search of clues and the plane’s black box on Friday, as the airline’s chairman said he was confident the crucial data recorder would be found in the wreckage by Saturday.

An investigation team visited the crash site on Friday and collected crime scene evidence.

Five French officers joined 15 members of the Civil Aviation Authority and the Pakistan Air Force to search through the debris in order to ascertain the cause of the fatal plane crash.

“The tail section was located yesterday but it was buried under a lot of rubble,” Airblue Chairman Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told AFP. “They spent today cutting through the rubble and we’re hopeful that tomorrow we’ll be able to recover the black box,” he added.

Meanwhile, bodies of the victims of Wednesday’s plane crash that were shifted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) have been moved to a cold storage in Sector I-10/3, of which 95 have been identified and handed over to the victims’ families.

PIMS has sent 210 bags containing body parts to the cold storage and taken samples of the body parts for DNA tests.

The samples have been sent to KRL Hospital in Sector G-11 for DNA tests.

Sources said 12 bodies were identified through fingerprint tests from NADRA.