Flight data recovered from the wreckage of a French airliner confirmed Saturday that explosives caused the crash that killed 171 people over an African desert, the government said.
Information obtained from the plane's black boxes "showed that the flight proceded in a normal manner until a total interruption, which translates as an explosion in flight" at an altitude of about 30,000 feet, said a statement issued by the Transport Ministry."The work of the crew was proceeding normally when the recording of words and electronic data abruptly stopped," the statement said.
It said data from the black boxes backed up the preliminary findings of an investigative commission at the site that "leads us to accept the hypothesis of the presence of explosives on board."
Workers searching wreckage in the northern African nation of Niger recovered both the cockpit recorder, which records in-flight conversations by the crew, and the flight data recorder, which records information such as altitude and speed. Both devices arrived in France late Friday night.
The conclusion drawn from the data signals the start of an intensive search for the individual or group responsible for the bombing of UTA Flight 772, which was flying to Paris from Brazzaville, Congo, when it crashed Tuesday.
The victims included seven Americans, among them Bonnie Pugh, wife of the U.S. ambassador to Chad, Robert L. Pugh.
In Beirut, a previously unknown group calling itself the Secret Chadian Resistance claimed responsibility on Saturday for the bombing.
In a typed a statement sent to Western news agencies, the group said: "The struggle will continue until the complete withdrawal of all military colonial forces from Africa."
France maintains 1,200 soldiers in Chad to help the former French colony in its 16-year-old war with Libya. But Libya and Chad signed an agreement Aug. 31 putting an end to the conflict.
Responsibility for the UTA bombing earlier had been claimed by the Iran-backed Shiite Moslem group Islamic Jihad.
Islamic Jihad is among several radcal fundamentalist groups believed to be part of Hezbollah, or Party of God, the Iranian-supported umbrella group thought to hold 16 Western hostages in Lebanon.