Feb 5, 2010 | AFP

BEIRUT — Searchers have located a large part of the fuselage of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in the sea off Lebanon last month killing 90 people, Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said on Saturday.

"The vessel 'Ocean Alert' has found part of the rear section of the aircraft's cabin between 10 and 12 metres (33 and 40 feet) long at a depth of 45 metres (150 feet) off Naameh," 12 kilometres (seven miles) south of Beirut, he told AFP.

"Specialist teams are getting ready to dive on the site to look for the black boxes" or flight recorders that could reveal why the January 25 crash happened, he said.

The Boeing 737-800 went down before dawn just minutes after take-off during stormy weather from Beirut airport, bound for Addis Ababa with 83 passengers and seven crew on board.

No survivors were found from Flight 409, and only 15 bodies have so far been recovered.

Aridi said he hoped other sections of the plane would soon be found, along with the bodies of the remaining victims, who are believed to be still strapped to their seats since the accident happened so soon after take-off.

Of the 15 bodies found, nine were Lebanese, five Ethiopian and one Iraqi. Fifty-four Lebanese were on board the aircraft.

The Lebanese military said on Saturday that "pictures are being taken" of the located section of fuselage with a view to raising it.

Flight recorders are usually placed in the rear of commercial airliners, but the search teams do not yet know whether they were thrown from the fuselage on impact.

Lebanese officials have said the captain was instructed by the control tower to change to a certain heading, but that the aircraft then took a different course.

Experts have told AFP that the stormy weather may not have been the only reason for the crash, and that the aircraft may have had engine or hydraulics problems.