Chinese authorities confirmed on Saturday night that all 132 passengers and crew from China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 were killed when their aircraft crashed in southern China.
The announcement from the search and rescue command centre in Wuzhou, near the crash site, was followed by a moment of silence for the dead, state news agency Xinhua reported.
The confirmation came as investigators said an electronic device installed near the second “black box” of the aircraft had been recovered, but the data recorder itself has not been found.
Zhu Tao, head of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said searchers had found the emergency locator transmitter, a device that sends a continuous radio signal in the event of a crash.