Looters May Have Stolen Jet’s Black Box Rescuers Can’t Identify Boy Found Alive At Cambodian Crash Site

Looters may have made away with a crucial flight recorder in the course of pillaging the wreckage of a deadly Vietnam Airlines crash, investigators said Thursday.

At least 65 people died Wednesday when the airliner went down while approaching Phnom Penh’s airport in a fierce rainstorm. The jet exploded in flames in a rice paddy about a half-mile south of the runway.

Seventeen bodies were recovered from the wreckage Thursday, joining 48 other corpses at Phnom Pehn’s main hospital, where relatives gathered to identify the dead.

It was still unclear how many of the dead were people on the plane, most of whom were from Taiwan and South Korea. Authorities said the crash may have killed some people on the ground.

At least one passenger survived - a 1-year-old Thai boy whose mother died in the crash. The boy, who suffered a broken leg, was released from the hospital Thursday and returned to Thailand with his father.

Another boy hospitalized with head injuries may also have been a passenger. Believed to be about 4 years old, he was found Wednesday wandering about 100 yards from the crash site. Doctors said he had spoken a few words of Vietnamese and Khmer, but they still didn’t know his name.

Investigators recovered one of the plane’s black boxes but were unable to say whether it was the voice or the data recorder.

The other box was still missing Thursday, and authorities feared it had been stolen.