Air Algerie jet's black boxes to be sent to France

BAMAKO, Mali — A French embassy spokesman says black boxes from the Air Algerie plane that crashed last week in northern Mali will be transferred to France for analysis.

Didier Nourrisson said Sunday the black boxes would be transferred from northern Mali to the capital, Bamako, and then delivered to Paris by French gendarmes.

The plane took off from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and was heading to Algiers, Algeria when it crashed early Thursday in northern Mali near the border with Burkina Faso.

French authorities say extreme bad weather was the likely cause but aren't ruling out other possibilities, including terrorism. French President Francois Hollande said Saturday that data from the black boxes must be analyzed as quickly as possible.

The crash killed 118 people, nearly half of whom were French.

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