Venezuelan investigators worked to recover the last bodies from the shattered fuselage of West Caribbean Airways flight 708 on Wednesday as aviation experts turned to flight recorders for clues about the crash that killed all 160 aboard. The Colombian charter jet, carrying tourists home to the French Caribbean island of Martinique from Panama, crashed nose first early on Tuesday in western Venezuela after both its engines failed in the country's worst air disaster. Recovery workers trudging through muddy fields have found the aircraft's two flight recorders and worked to remove bodies mutilated or buried by impact of the MD-82 aircraft now scattered over a remote cattle farm. "They are using machinery to cut through metal, chain saws to cut through trees, whatever we can to take the remains out," Col. Antonio Rivero, head of Venezuela's Civil Protection agency, told Reuters from the crash site. "I can't say how many bodies have been pulled out because what we are recovering are parts," he said. A stench hung over the crash site where twisted fuselage, papers and small pieces of flesh lay strewn amid scorched trees and scrub, a Reuters photographer at the site said. The aircraft's blue-and-white tail stood alone in a watery ditch. --more 2317 Local Time 2017 GMT
